


The Haunted Hotel

by Vengeful_Authoress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Amusement Parks, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, M/M, Witch!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26116438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vengeful_Authoress/pseuds/Vengeful_Authoress
Summary: Derek's job at the Beacon Hills Amusement Park was supposed to be just that, a job, but when the Haunted Hotel ride breaks down under mysterious circumstances, he gets a lot more than he bargained for, including a centuries-old witch, a ghost, and a whole lot of bad animatronics.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 17
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic came about two years ago or so when my bestie and prime fic idea generator and I were wandering around the Brighton boardwalk and of course had to go on the shitty Haunted Hotel ride. Certainly better times than what we're facing right now. I hope everyone is safe and healthy, and I hope y'all are smart enough to actually wear masks. Also, check in with your Iowan friends because we had an inland-hurricane August 14th. I was without power for four days, and I was one of the lucky ones. There's been no national coverage of the event, so that's fun. 
> 
> Anywho, hopefully this will brighten your day a little bit.

Derek’s radio crackles at his hip, startling him out of the trance he’s been in, staring at a snowy TV screen. He fumbles to free the device from his belt, nearly dropping it. “Uh, maintenance.”

“Yeah, we need a repair down at the Haunted Hotel. One of the animatronics is malfunctioning,” his supervisor drawls, sounding bored.

Derek’s stomach drops. “Yes, sir.”

“And hurry. There’s a line.”

The radio goes dead, and Derek just sits there for a few seconds, staring at his hands. This is the one job he’s been trying to avoid for the two months he’s been working at the Beacon Hills Park.

He drags himself out of his chair and grabs his toolbox, slouching out the door. The sun slices into his eyes, and he lifts his hand to block it out. The amusement park slides into focus around him. Small children dart in every direction, dragging their parents along with them, and older teens, usually in groups of three or four, roam from stall to stall. The scents of fried dough and sugar fill the air, mostly covering up the stench of the garbage that needed to be taken out three days ago. The sun beats down on the colorful curves of the rollercoasters which creak and rattle along endlessly.

Derek’s nose twitches as he walks, the barrage of scents almost overwhelming his werewolf senses just like they always do when he steps outside his carefully air-freshened trailer. Maybe he should just start wearing a miniature pine sol truck freshener around his neck. He weaves his way through the dirty alleyways, past the petting zoo, the Cyclone, and the Dancing Mouse to the edge of the Park where the Haunted Hotel sits.

The building is constructed to look old and rickety, faux wood paneling that’s actually just plastic covering the walls, neon red letters that are supposed to look like they’re dripping blood proclaiming the ride’s name from the second story balcony. A vampire with a half melted face creaks out of a shuttered window on the roof at irregular intervals, a Frankenstein-esque monster coming out a matching window on the other side.

Derek shivers to look at it. God help him.

He takes a deep breath and stalks towards the operator’s booth, past the line of visitors shifting on their feet and whispering impatiently to each other in their little groups. Derek feels their eyes following him, appraising, wondering.

He knocks on the door to the operator’s booth, and the kid inside jumps, flailing his arms and nearly falling out of his chair as he spins around, hand flying to his chest. “Great Scott, man, you damn near gave me a heart attack!”

 _Great Scott?_ Derek raises an eyebrow as he takes in the kid, who looks to be around eighteen or nineteen. He has spiky, dark brown hair, and his skin is pale like the wafer thin pages of a book, his features thin and pointed, a little fae in appearance. Derek catches a whiff of his scent and almost takes a step backwards. The kid smells like ancient oaks that have never felt the touch of human hands and pages that are so delicate they crack at the slightest breath. He smells like the deep earth and the tang of lightning across the sky, and a whiff of it is enough to make Derek feel dizzy, to sway on his feet.

The kid snaps his fingers in front of Derek’s face. “Hey, Buck Rogers, are you all in there?”

Derek blinks. “Sorry.” He shakes his head, and the scent dies, leaving the kid smelling like he never existed. “One of the animatronics is broken?”

“Oh, yeah, our zombie businessman.” The kid points at screen six where an animatronic in a tattered suit twitches by the track, its entire torso jerking from side to side erratically, taking its raised arms along for the ride.

Great. Derek loves zombies.

“Show me?” he says, trying to sound disinterested and not like he wants to run in the opposite direction.

“Yeah, sure.” The kid hops off his stool and grabs a ring of keys. Despite the heat, he wears black long sleeves under his red Beacon Hills Park polo and dark jeans. “I’m Stiles, by the way.” He smiles at Derek, a crooked expression, and just a hint of that heady scent wafts through the air.

“Derek.”

“Hale, right?” Stiles asks, and Derek nods. “Your fam’s been in town for, like, what, ever?”

“Since long before I was born,” Derek says.

They enter the Haunted Hotel, stepping onto the tracks and ducking through the curtain doors into a pitch black hallway. Derek represses a shudder as Stiles clicks on his flashlight and sweeps the beam around. Dust motes float through the air, and fake cobwebs claw at the walls, the tracks below their feet pocked with rust. Derek eyes the darkness around them. Logically, he knows that the ride is turned off, but he’s still convinced something is going to jump out at him.

Derek flinches when the lock clicks, and Stiles gives him a smile that’s somewhere between sly and what Derek suspects is his normal, mischievous expression, so Derek can’t tell if he noticed or not. Their footsteps clang up the metal stairs, and the door at the top spills them out into the crumbling remains of a hotel room. A rusted out bed with bloodstained sheets dominates the floor, the desiccated and chewed on corpse of some poor girl splayed across the mattress as the wallpaper peels all around her. The busted animatronic stands by the tracks, still waving its arms, its rubber features somewhere between real and fake in a way that puts Derek’s teeth on edge.

“Cut the power to it?” he suggests.

“We have,” Stiles says.

That’s not fucking creepy at all.

“There should be a manual override switch on the back of its neck.”

Derek approaches the animatronic zombie the same way he would approach a supposedly unsuspecting predator and lifts the soft rubber skin at the base of its neck, the oily material sending shudders down his spine. He presses the red button there, and the zombie’s creaking movement finally stops. He breathes a sigh of relief.

Derek opens up the thing’s back and finds a jumble of frayed wires. He pulls a few tools from his box, quickly losing himself in the work of redoing the wiring, his fingers tripping easily over the thin threads.

“You’re pretty good at that,” a voice says at his shoulder when he’s done, and Derek jumps violently, nearly spearing the zombie through the head with his screwdriver. Stiles stands right behind him. Derek hadn’t heard him approach, doesn’t know how long he’s been there.

“Do you _breathe_?” he demands.

“Most of the time,” Stiles says. “You done?”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Please, God. Just get him out of there.

As if he can read Derek’s mind, Stiles takes his sweet time sauntering towards the door hidden behind a rickety cabinet, and Derek is almost ready to shove him down the ladder. The dead girl’s head is tipped to the side, the vacant, white marbles that serve as her eyes staring right at him.

Derek barely restrains himself from pushing past Stiles at the bottom of the stairs and diving out of the ride into the sunlight. Tension rolls off him in waves when he finally has his feet back on the concrete, and he unclenches his white knuckles from around the handle of his toolbox.

“Why, Derek Hale, are you _afraid_ of the Haunted Hotel?” Stiles asks, smirking. Derek does not like that glint in his eyes.

“What? No!” Derek snaps, a little too vehemently to be believable.

Stiles shrugs as he leads the way back to the operator’s booth. “It’s okay if you are. It’s just not what I’d expect from, you know, your kind.”

“What do you mean ‘my kind’?” Derek asks suspiciously.

Stiles sits on his stool and spins it so he can grin up at Derek. His normally nearly-black eyes go a little red, and Derek catches a whiff of that scent again. “Oh, you know, tall, dark, and brooding.” He winks. “And handsome.”

Heat floods up Derek’s neck. “Hard to be brooding when you’re wearing a bright red polo.”

Stiles throws back his head and laughs, a bright, soaring sound that Derek wants to hear again.

A middle aged white woman with badly dyed blonde bangs raps on the glass partition with her knuckles, glaring at Stiles from behind her wide sunglasses. “Is the ride fixed yet? We’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes!”

Stiles turns to stare at her with blank eyes. “The ride will be ready when I say it’s ready,” he says. “Unless you’d rather go on now and get your head taken off by a robotic zombie, please, be my guest.” He gestures towards one of the waiting carts, and Derek stares at him, jaw dropped.

Two spots of color appear in the woman’s cheeks. “Young man, where is your manager? You can’t talk to me like that.” Her voice reaches a register Derek didn’t know was humanly possible, rage boiling off her, smelling like burnt perfume.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll call my manager.” Stiles reaches for his radio. “But he’s on break right now, so it’ll probably take him about twenty minutes for him to get here, ten for you to yell at him, and then another ten-fifteen minutes for us to finish testing the ride. I’m sure everyone in line behind you would really appreciate that.”

The woman glances over her shoulder, realizing for the first time just how many people are glaring at her. The red in her neck climbs even higher, but she sniffs to try and save face and notes Stiles’ nametag. “Fine. But I will be filing a complaint against you, young man.”

Stiles snorts. “Young man. That’s funny.”

The woman backs off, and Derek hangs around while Stiles test runs the ride, just to make sure that the zombie businessman is running properly. “Great. I’ll be off,” Derek says, eager to be away from the Haunted Hotel.

“Or you could stay.” Stiles reaches out and grabs Derek’s wrist to stop him from walking away. “You don’t have anything else to do, do you? Come on, keep me company.”

There comes that old oak and paper smell again, which Derek apparently can’t resist because he shrugs and steps into the booth, wedging himself against the back wall, his head brushing the bottom of a shelf containing a bunch of tiny succulents and other merrily growing plants.

“Tokens please,” Stiles says to the waiting park guests and begins to collect the brass coins. The people go through two at a time, the individual carts sent forward once the one ahead has reached a certain point in the ride. The middle-aged woman sulkily hands him her token when her turn comes and totes her husband towards the cart, her two children behind her.

“Take over for a minute,” Stiles says to Derek, springing to his feet as the woman’s cart disappears through the curtains.

“What?” Derek asks, startled.

“Just take the tokens, make sure the seatbelts are fastened, and send off the cart when the one ahead gets here.” Stiles points at a place on the security feet. “That button there.”

He disappears from the booth before Derek can protest, scooting into the Haunted Hotel. Derek stares after him for a moment before a cough catches his attention, and he turns to see a little, blonde boy staring at him expectantly. “Uh, token?” he says.

Three minutes later, the middle-aged woman’s cart appears at the exit, and she staggers out of it and away from the ride, white as a sheet. Stiles materializes beside Derek a moment later, startling him once again, enough that he curses in surprise. “What did you do?”

“I worked my magic.” Stiles grins and wiggles his fingers, his strange scent a cloud around him.

“She looks like she saw an actual ghost.” Derek retreats back to his wall and lets Stiles take over the tokens again.

“Maybe she did. The ride is supposed to be haunted.” Stiles sounds mighty pleased with himself for some reason.

A lull comes in the line, and Stiles leans back against the control panel, grinning at Derek with a look in his eyes that Derek can’t identify. “So, uh.” Derek clears his throat. He doesn’t do small talk very well. “Do you go to Beacon Hills High?”

“Nope.” Stiles pops the ‘p’.

That would explain why Derek has never seen him before; he often picks the younger Pack Betas up after school. “Did you just move here?”

“Nope.” Again, that popped ‘p’ and that shit eating grin. “Been here quite a while.”

“Where do you live then?” Derek thought he could at least recognize most of the people who live in town.

“In a pocket dimension out in the woods.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Fine, then, don’t tell me.”

Stiles just laughs. “Tell me something, Derek Hale,” he drawls a moment later. Something about the way he says Derek’s full name makes his spine tingle. “If you could be any kind of plant, what would you be?”

“What? “Derek asks, startled.

“What kind of plant would you be?” Stiles repeats. He stands and moves to the little shelf, crowding right into Derek’s personal space, close enough that Derek can feel his body heat. He points a long finger to the middle pot. “This is me. It’s a type of foxglove called Pam’s Choice.”

Derek leans forward to take a closer look. A little stalk covered in white flowers with a deep burgundy center crawls about six inches into the air. It’s cute, tall and spindly like Stiles, even smelling just a bit like him.

“I don’t really know anything about plants,” Derek says, hardly breathing.

Stiles tilts his head so they’re practically nose to nose, and Derek can smell his breath even without his werewolf senses; peppermint gum and the ghost of a chocolate bar. “I think you’d be a spiral aloe.”

Derek doesn’t know enough about plants to dispute that, so he just says, “Okay,” and watches as Stiles straightens his little pots. If he didn’t know better, Derek would say that some of the leaves seem to lean towards Stiles’ fingers.

Derek’s radio crackles, startling him, and with great effort, he draws his eyes away from Stiles. “Maintenance,” he says into the speaker.

“You’re needed at the Cyclone,” his supervisor says shortly.

Stiles’ long fingers snag his wrist as he turns to leave, and a slip of old-oak-and-paper circles around Derek’s head. “Meet me here at closing, and we’ll walk out together?” Stiles asks. His teeth are pearly white in his smile.

The last thing Derek wants to do is come back to the Haunted Hotel. “Okay,” he says. Goddamnit.

“Great!” Stiles chirps. “See you in a few hours!”

Derek hurries off, hating that he has to turn his back to that stupid ride, and he doesn’t relax until the damn thing is blocked from his sight by the colorful curves of the rollercoasters.

The rest of the day goes by quickly as Derek gets three more calls. The summer heat seems to be sending all the machinery on the fritz. After the park closes, Derek stores his toolbox in the maintenance shed and signs the hours sheet, rubbing at his gritty eyes. He stands in the shadows and watches as the last of the park goers straggle towards the gates under the annoyed and frazzled eyes of the park workers. Then he sighs. Going to the Haunted Hotel twice in one day is two times too many.

Stiles isn’t in the control booth, and Derek frowns. Stiles wouldn’t just leave without telling him, would he? Nerves crawl in Derek’s stomach; the kid does seem kind of flighty. He peeks inside the control booth, seeing Stiles’ little plants on their shelf, so Derek figures he must be around here somewhere, maybe in the toilet.

A flicker of movement on the security cameras catches Derek’s eyes, and his head snaps round. Stiles is in the clutches of the animatronic doctor, trapped on an operating table, legs flailing, and Derek hears a saw whirring, though he can’t tell if it’s a real sound picked up by his wolf ears or just in his head.

Derek snarls, claws begging to pop out, heat bleeding into his eyes, as he slams out of the control booth and barrels into the ride, following the old oak and pine scent through the twists and turns. The ride is off, the rails pitch black, but his wolf vision keeps him from stumbling, the creatures hulking shadows around the edges of his vision.

He ignores all of them and bursts into the faux surgical room which is lit up by two flickering, orange lamps, meant to look like flames. Stiles lies on the table, struggling against the rubber and mechanical arms of a waxen-faced doctor as it tries to bring a saw down on his head, its other hand around his neck.

“Derek, help me!” Stiles grunts, kicking out with his legs.

Derek lungs forward—he knew it; he fucking _knew_ it. Just before his hand, claws barely restrained, seizes the animatronic’s shoulder, the machine dies, the lights dimming, and Stiles pries the hand away and sits up, cackling. Actually cackling. Holding his stomach and tossing his head back, and _bellowing_ with laughter. “Your face!” he wheezes, his own features lit up by the flashlight he discarded on the table. “Full Moon, you should have seen your face!”

Derek just stares at him, shocked, trying to figure out what’s happening while his wolf bellows “FIND THE DANGER! FIND THE DANGER!” “You’re not…in danger?” he finally manages.

“Of course not, man.” Stiles hops off the table and claps the animatronic on the shoulder in a way that makes Derek flinch. “It’s just a machine.” He scoops up his flashlight, shining the beam under his chin. “It’s not like it’s _haunted_.” He draws out the last word.

There’s an echoing thud somewhere within the ride, punctuated by a wave of old oak and paper.

Derek jumps, but that only makes Stiles cackle louder.

They leave the ride, Derek edging towards the exit to indicate that he wants this to happen while Stiles chortles to himself and keeps making ‘your face’ comments. “Why?” Derek asks as Stiles is flipping the last of the switches to power down the ride.

Stiles grins in a way that’s somewhere between mischievous and almost a little malicious. “Because it’s _hilarious_.”

“It’s really not,” Derek huffs, crossing his arms. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

That just makes Stiles grin wider as he collects his little plants and makes them disappear into a battered leather satchel.

“Shall we go, Derek Hale?” he asks once he’s done, gesturing towards the control booth door and smirking.

Derek nods. “Let’s get out of here.” And away from the Haunted Hotel.

He leads the way out of the booth, and Stiles falls into step beside him, long limbs rolling languidly across the ground. “So Derek Hale.” He has a deck of cards in his hands that Derek didn’t see him take out, shuffling them over and over in his spider-leg fingers. “Tell me, who are you?”

“What kind of question is that?” Derek demands, hands shoved deep in his pockets, as they wander towards the exit.

Stiles laughs. “I suppose it is a hard question. Many connotations. Many meanings. Who am I on the surface? On the gut level? What defines me? Is it my name? My true name? The one people call me? Or is it the things that I do? The actions that I take?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Derek’s head is spinning from the barrage of words streaming from Stiles’ mouth.

“It’s complicated, I know.” Stiles claps Derek on the shoulder. “Give it some thought, eh?”

They pass under the exit arch, and Derek takes the lead, showing Stiles towards his car. He parks his black Camaro at the back of the lot so that it won’t get scratched, though he’s always convinced he’s going to leave work one day and there’s going to be a giant dent in the fender.

But his baby is, once again, fine.

Stiles slides into the shotgun seat as soon as Derek unlocks the door, folding himself up in a flurry of movement that somehow manages to look both clumsy and natural at the same time. He immediately props his feet up on the dash, and Derek wants to kick him. But he doesn’t say anything. Stiles just kind of has this vibe—it’s impossible to tell him not to do something.

“Which way?” Derek asks.

So Stiles directs him away from the amusement park and deeper into the woods, away from town, prattling on about this, that, and the next thing, a never ending stream of plant talk, bad jokes, and an in depth summary of the last book he read. Some thousand-page monstrosity about the history of witches in Europe.

“Oh, right here!” Stiles cuts off mid-sentence and points out the windshield at the woods.

Derek slams his foot down on the brake, skidding to a halt on a county road in the middle of nowhere. Only woods surround them. “There’s nothing out here,” Derek points out. “What are you…?”

But Stiles hops out of the car without answering, waving a cheeky goodbye and striding off into the trees. Derek watches him go, confused, but he blinks, and then Stiles is gone.

* * *

Stiles hasn’t had this much fun in ages, not since those years he spent screwing with all those up tight, Puritan dicks in Salem. But this—oh man, it’s so juicy—a werewolf with a fear of bad animatronics. The whole thing just tickles him. Down to the bone.

He travels along a ley line from his pocket dimension in the woods to the park entrance, popping out of a shadow and sauntering towards the employee office to clock in. Technically, he is on time. Humans have yet to realize that all time is relative, and Stiles sometimes has trouble readjusting to their concept of seconds, minutes, and hours.

He senses the werewolf as he punches his card, but doesn’t see Derek Hale anywhere—figures he would be one of those “on-time is late and early is on-time” mortals. Stiles smirks to himself, leaving the cramped employee office for the bright, sunlit park; he has so many plans for the day.

When he arrives at his control booth, he unpacks his plants. His little sprig of foxglove, the one he brought with him to America four hundred years ago, leans in to brush his fingers as he sets it down on the ledge. Then there is the tiny mum he attached to the amusement park’s energy, its flowers looking tired and washed out since the day has just begun and the only energy flowing through the park is the tired, humdrum spark of the employees. He also has a Bodhi tree, which he connected to the Nemeton when he arrived in Beacon Hills, and five succulents which power various spells and wards. A new plant joins the ranks—a spiral aloe—for Derek Hale.

Burgundy sparks waft off Stiles’ fingers and into the control console before he even turns it on, and a hiss fills his booth for a few seconds before it cuts off. Perfect. Stiles lifts his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Maintenance? Hey, yeah, the Haunted Hotel won’t turn on. It’s been finicky all week. Can you send someone? Five minutes? Perfect. Thanks.”

A grin splits his face as he drops the radio, kicking his feet up onto the console to wait for Derek Hale. The park opens while he’s waiting, and after a minute, a trio of brace-toothed preteens swarms up to his window. One of them knocks awkwardly on the glass. “Hey, is this ride open yet?”

“Nope.” Stiles pops the ‘p’. “It’s being weird.”

More sparks come off his fingers, hidden beneath the console, and something roars from within the Haunted Hotel. It’s not a sound any machine could make. “See?”

The kids go pale, making the pimples on their chins stand out, and then scurry off, practically tripping over each other. “I told you it was haunted!” Stiles hears one of them hiss to the others.

Stiles has done good work here.

Derek Hale passes the preteens, no doubt overhearing their quiet, excited conversation, and the leaves on his plant wilt just a little bit. He pauses in the doorway to Stiles’ shed. “What is it this time?” There’s a slump to his shoulders, the slump of vague defeat.

Stiles flicks a couple of switches and presses the red start button. Nothing happens. “It’s not turning on.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what’s going on.” That’s not, technically, true.

“Alright. Wait here. I’ll go trip the breaker.”

Derek Hale walks reluctantly onto the tracks and disappears into the ride. Stiles waits a moment, then follows him.

As he steps into the darkness, he weaves a subtle set of spells around him, masking his presence from the werewolf’s senses. On feet as silent as flowers in a breeze, Stiles ghosts after Derek. The werewolf is not hard to track, despite the darkness that drowns the ride. All supernatural creatures give off an energy signature, a pulse, a scent trail, that Stiles can see through his third eye. Derek’s footprints—or paw prints, more accurately—glow a gentle blue, like the sea caught just before the sun begins to fall.

Pipes rattle at the tiny twitches of Stiles’ fingers, and Derek Hale’s steps hitch, shoulders tense beneath the fabric of his polo. A whisper of wind follows. Shadows flicker in the beam of Derek’s flashlight. They don’t move as normal shadows do.

Derek freezes, spins around, flashlight beam slicing through the darkness like a sword through lowland mist, right through where Stiles should be standing, but he’s gone, slipped between two metal struts sticking out of the wall. The rust scratching his skin is only half fake.

_Run…_

The voice is a whisper. A thread through the tunnel. Barely there.

“Who—” Derek Hale’s eyes glow in the dark, electric blue, the smudge of a fang illuminated underneath. “Who’s there?” He sniffs, but there’s nothing there for him to catch. Stiles made sure.

“Stiles? If this is you, this isn’t funny.”

Stiles snickers. It is, in fact, very funny.

Just as Derek turns back around, waiting six heartbeats to make absolutely sure there’s nothing in the blackness, that voice speaks again, booms, really, reverberating through bone.

_RUN!_

A shape lumbers out of the darkness, right past Derek, too large and disproportioned to be human. Gears clank as it disappears on the other side of the tunnel. Derek shrieks. If Stiles is honest, it’s practically a squeal.

And he does as the voice orders, though he doesn’t run for the exit, but deeper into the ride, all the way to the breaker room where he slams on the appropriate levers and buttons to bring the ride back to life. Stiles snaps his fingers and returns power to the wires and coils.

Derek jumps as the lights come back on, claws snapping out and searching for a target. Stiles has to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep giggles at bay. He lets ghostly laughter trip through the halls as he hurries back to his booth, needing to be there before Derek exits the ride.

Outside, the sunlight burning his eyes after so long in the dark, he throws himself onto his stool, nearly slamming into the wall, and rolls around to prop his feet up on the console, tipping his head back to pretend to be asleep, releasing his hold on his scent so that it floods back into the booth.

Derek slams into the booth’s open doorway, breathing heavily, and Stiles launches himself upright with some flailing limbs. “Jeez, you almost gave me a heart attack!” Stiles clutches his chest for emphasis.

“Yeah, well, I just had about five heart attacks in there, so you deserve it.” Derek gestures towards the Haunted Hotel with a limp hand.

“And I thank your heart for its service.” Stiles rolls languidly out of his chair and over to Derek to tap him on the chest, letting a little spark fizz through his fingers. Derek sniffs sharply and shivers, half leaning in to Stiles’ touch before pulling away again.

“You…” Derek hesitates, licks his lips. “Do you believe those rumors about your ride being,” he drops his voice to a whisper, “actually haunted?”

Ah, Stiles has done such good work here. “Anything’s possible, right?”

And the Haunted Hotel lets out a long, rattling groan.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, dude, get us in for free.” Scott gives Derek one of his famous, doe-eyed looks, three of the other, younger Hale Betas arrayed behind him, looking pitiful and poor. Allison Argent, Scott’s human girlfriend, indoctrinated into the supernatural world by her hunter father and converted to the werewolves’ side by her love for Scott; Isaac Lahey, wearer of too many scarves, turned by Derek’s mother in order to save him from an abusive father; Lydia Martin, banshee, bitten by a rogue Alpha passing through town, adopted by the Hale Pack; Scott McCall, the werewolf currently making puppy eyes at Derek, was bitten by that same rogue Alpha, though it took Talia Hale quite a while to convince him that everything was going to be okay and he should join the Pack. Scott was—and still is—the epitome of teenage stubbornness.

“It literally costs five dollars,” Derek says as he slams the door to his Camaro and starts to walk towards the amusement park entrance.

“But we’re _poor_ _teenagers_ ,” Scott whines. “And Talia says you’re supposed to take care of us.”

“I’m pretty sure this is not what she meant,” Derek sighs, but he pulls his wallet out anyways and forks over the cash.

The sad, kicked puppy look immediately disappears from each of their faces as Scott snatches the money from Derek’s hand, and they take off towards the front entrance. Derek sighs and rolls his eyes after them. The park isn’t even open yet, but Lydia is the only one with a car, and her mother had to use it this so morning, so they all caught a ride with him.

Derek saunters past them and through the employee door, giving them a sarcastic little wave as they bemoan the fact that they have to wait fifteen more minutes. He punches his time card, noting that Stiles hasn’t clocked in yet. He doesn’t know why this is something he notices, but his eyes flick right to the card with Stiles’ name on it.

Derek gets the feeling that Stiles is late a lot.

Derek goes about his pre-shift business—last minute tune ups, cleaning, storeroom stocking—and when the doors open to the public, the Betas tumble through and dart off to their first ride, cackling about “the working man” as they pass him.

He finds himself drifting pass the Haunted Hotel every five minutes—not too close, mind you, just close enough to see into the control booth with his wolf eyes—to see if a certain gangly limbed someone is there yet.

“Hey,” a voice says on his third pass, and Derek jumps out of his skin. The smell of old trees and the tang of lightning washes over him. He turns, and there’s Stiles, cheekbones like the ridges of a mountain.

Derek doesn’t understand how a human with that strong a scent could sneak up on him. “Please tell me your ride doesn’t need fixing again.”

“Not right now,” Stiles promises with a devilish grin that makes Derek extremely nervous.

“Would you look at this.” Isaac slams into Derek’s shoulder with the rest of the Betas close behind him, all grinning wolfishly in a way that Derek doesn’t like. “I didn’t know that Derek could _talk_ to other people.”

The Betas snicker as Derek shoves Isaac away, wishing they weren’t in public so he could smack the younger Beta upside the head.

“Who are your friends, Derek?” Stiles asked, head cocked to the side in curiosity. Derek sees Scott sniff, though he manages to keep most of the confusion off his face.

Derek sighs. He hates when worlds collide. “Isaac, Scott, Allison, Lydia, meet Stiles.” He realizes he doesn’t know Stiles’ last name. “He runs the Haunted Hotel.”

“We were going to go on that next,” Scott says. “Sounds spooky.” He laughs as he draws out the ‘o.’

And the evil grin is back on Stiles’ face. “Did you guys know that Derek here is afraid of the animatronics?”

And there goes any last shred of respectability that Derek might have had with the others.

The Betas erupt into raucous laughter, cartoonish in its intensity, clutching stomachs and half doubled over, and this time Derek does actually punch Isaac in the solar plexus. He coughs, wheezes, and Derek is satisfied that he regrets it.

“I’m serious,” Stiles continues, and Derek wishes he had a sock. “I pretended to be savaged by the zombie doctor, and he nearly shat himself when he saw the scalpel in the thing’s hand. Classic. I wish I’d had one of those recording things.” Stiles pretends to wipe a single tear from his eye.

“Well then, we’ve got to go on this ride if it terrifies even the unflappable Derek Hale,” Lydia says, popping the ‘ps’ with her cherry chap stick lips and winking at him out of the corner of her eye.

“They say it’s actually haunted, you know,” Stiles says as he nudges his head in the direction of the ride and begins to lead the way. “Some people go in and get a little more than they bargained for. I’ve seen them come out. White in the face. Trembling just a little bit.” He sounds like the narrator on one of those terrible ghost hunting shows.

The park is small enough that the Haunted Hotel is in sight by the time Stiles finishes his little speech, and Derek stops while he’s still a good fifty feet away from the control booth. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“You really are a scaredy cat,” Allison says, sharing a grin and a nudge with Scott.

“I am not,” Derek snaps. “I just have another maintenance call to go see to.”

“Liar,” Scott accuses.

“Come on, give him a break.” Stiles comes to Derek’s rescue which is about the last thing Derek expected from him. “He can hang out in the control booth with me. We can…chat.” He says chat as if that’s not actually what he means, and the Betas pick up on it.

Isaac wolf whistles so very subtly and nudges Derek hard in the ribs. Derek snaps at him, unable to keep his fangs from coming out just a little bit.

Stiles looks all too pleased with himself.

The Betas pile into the little ride cars and lock themselves in while Stiles finishes booting up the ride. In a few seconds, they’re gone into the dark bowels of the Haunted Hotel, lost to whatever fresh hell awaits them—a fresh hell that Derek can’t make out as the cameras seem to be fritzing out.

“Should we be worried about that?” Derek asks, but Stiles just shrugs, propped up against the wall.

“Nah.” Stiles props his feet up on the console, one sneaker falling perilously close to an important looking button. “So how do you know all those kids?”

“Family friends,” Derek says because that’s close enough to the truth. “They’re a pain in my ass.”

“Such a nice ass to be a pain to.”

Derek’s face instantly floods with heat, and he splutters, searching for a response but coming up absolutely empty as Stiles grins at him and cracks his jaw. There’s a signal in there somewhere, but Derek can’t read it, or maybe doesn’t want to read it because then he would have to do something about it, and that is far, far scarier than anything inside the Haunted Hotel.

So he coughs into his hand and changes the subject. “How, uh, how long have you been in Beacon Hills?”

“Oh, a while now,” Stiles says vaguely. “I move around a lot.”

“Where all have you been?” Derek asks, genuinely curious. He’s lived in Beacon Hills all his life. Once a Pack settles down, it doesn’t move again. Territory and all that.

“Let’s see, Ireland for a while, Salem for a bit, bounced back to Italy.” He pauses, head roving back and forth as he thinks. “I hit up Russia for a little bit, then came back to the States. Florida for a month before I realized that was a huge mistake. Me and the South don’t really mix.” He laughs a little and winks. “Then Chicago, Louisiana, Washington, and finally here.”

Derek doesn’t know how one person could have lived in that many places at…however old Stiles is. Derek can’t really tell. He’s got one of those faces that could be sixteen or it could be twenty-eight. “Your parents have jobs that required moving around?” he says because that’s the only reason he can think of.

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Stiles replies, though there’s an odd look in his eyes.

“What was your favorite?”

“Ireland.” A dreamy expression takes over Stiles’ face, and the air takes on the scent of damp dirt and sea wind. “The world was green for miles around, and one step out my door took me into a whole other world. The mist on my face…” He trails off, lost back in his memories. Behind him, on the little shelf, the bell-like flowers on his foxglove plant seem to breath in and out.

“Will you ever go back?”

The flowers wilt, drooping towards the ground. “I kind of left under…unpleasant circumstances.” A smirk—a false one—attempts to lift his lips, and he reaches down to massage his left calf. “It’s been a while, though…maybe…” He trails off and doesn’t restart again, just keeps rubbing his leg. His scent takes on an acrid edge, like he’s in pain.

The ride comes to an end, the cars with the Betas in them squeaking to a halt before the stairs. They pile out, chattering amongst themselves, and Stiles and Derek swing out of the control booth to meet them.

“Well?” Stiles asks them, all darker emotions wiped from his face in favor of his standard smirk.

Scott shares a look with Allison. “Holy shit, man. That was freaky.”

“The rumors are true then,” Allison says, looking around the group for confirmation. “This place really is haunted.” She rubs at her arms, shivering.

Derek glances at Lydia who gives him a small nod. So he’s not wrong. There is something wrong with that ride. He’s not just a coward with too big an imagination.

“This place is even better after dark,” Stiles says with a grin. “That’s when the best hauntings happen. I could sneak y’all in, if you wanted.”

“That sounds like fun,” Lydia replies before anyone else can answer. “Let’s do it.”

Stiles claps his hands together. Behind him, Derek sees the little foxglove plant perk back up, waving in an unseen wind. “Meet me at the front gates at 11:30. Witching hour is the best time for these things.” He winks, and the red lights flicker on the Haunted Hotel sign. Lydia touches the back of her neck.

“Let’s hit up some other rides,” Isaac says, tugging on Scott’s sleeve. “We’ll see you two tonight.” He gives Derek a wink that makes him want to punch the Beta in the nose.

Derek catches Lydia’s arm and pulls her to the side before all of them run off. “Is there really something here?” he asks, voice low so Stiles can’t hear.

“Something…but I can’t quite tell what. Things here are weird. Jumbled.”

Derek adjusts his tool belt and rubs his chin. “Glad I’m not totally crazy. You saw shit in there, right? Shit that definitely wasn’t part of the ride?”

“The props weren’t moving on their tracks. There was this weird mist, too, all thick and grey, that didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere. And screaming—real screaming.” Lydia, Derek, and the others know all too well what real screaming sounds like. “And there was a creature. Came down from the ceiling. I swear it touched me.” Lydia drew three lines across her face with her fingers.

“Let’s check it out tonight,” Derek says and smiles in goodbye. Lydia hurries after the other Betas who are already in line for the Ferris Wheel.

“What’re y’all talking about?” Stiles appears beside Derek, and he jerks away, startled.

“Tonight,” Derek says since that’s not technically a lie.

“Hey.” Stiles smacks Derek on the chest with the back of his hand. “I know a great place for lunch. Want to join me later?”

Nerves flutter in Derek’s stomach at the thought, flies that take wing from each organ and surge up his throat, threatening to choke him until they at last burst free as one, single word. “Okay.”

“Meet me at the Booster, yeah?”

Derek nods, and the way Stiles smiles in response makes his heart stop for just a second. He feels like he’s fallen off a cliff, body-slammed by some unseen force, and now he’s falling, tumbling, breath stolen by the grasping wind, and he’s spinning round and round so that the sky and the earth blend together into a riot of color that swirls and swirls and swirls until he’s lost in it, the scent of old books and even older earth wrapped around him, the snap of lightning breaking the whole world apart.

* * *

Come lunchtime, Stiles meanders up to the empty Booster ride, hands stuck deep in his pockets where he rolls a marble around and around in his fingers. In human terms, he’s running late, but what’s fifteen minutes when you’ve been around for a couple thousand years? Derek Hale is already there, of course.

He looks nervous when he spots Stiles coming towards him, standing up from where he’s been leaning against the railing that marks the path of the Booster’s line. There are no people waiting on the ride, though, since there’s something deeply wrong with its mechanics, something they need to call in a technician from Los Angeles to fix. Stiles may have been responsible for the problem, shorting out the circuitry while he was bored and summoning a storm one day.

Stiles sidles right up into Derek’s personal space and hip checks him. Derek Hale has a little red lunch bag in his hand, and Stiles finds that _adorable_. “How are you with heights?” he asks.

“Fine,” Derek answers suspiciously.

“Better than you are with animatronics?” Stiles smirks at the glare Derek gives him. The werewolf doesn’t deign to answer.

Stiles grabs Derek Hale’s hand and drags him towards the back of the Booster where there’s a maintenance hatch and a metal ladder leading all the way up to the top of the ride. Derek cranes his neck to peer up at the tiny speck of sunlight peeking down at them. “Is this allowed?”

“Of course not.” Stiles laughs and starts up the ladder, wiggling his ass just a bit to give Derek a little show.

The climb takes about five minutes. The hatch at the stop unlocks at Stiles’ touch, and he shoves it open with his shoulder, the squeal of metal harsh in his ear. Wind, so much stronger all the way up here, catches his hair as he climbs out into the open. There’s just enough room on the little platform for the two of them to sit, and the metal is warm through Stiles’ jeans. He leans one leg against Derek’s, the pressure of another person a comfort he hasn’t felt in a while.

From up here, they can see the sprawling Preserve, deep and green, the edges set aglow by the lights of the town. Stiles closes his eyes and lets the wind take him away. In his memories, it carries the scent of sea salt and the crash of waves against rock, his fingers sunk deep into moss rather than metal. He smiles, blocking out the sound of shouting and the smell of smoke around the edges.

A nudge brings him back to the present, and he opens his eyes to see Derek Hale looking at him, the sun hot on his face once more. “Where’d you go?” Derek asks.

“The Cliffs of Moher were always my favorite place,” Stiles answers, though he can’t keep the soft twinge of sadness from his voice. The cliffs were his favorite place in the world up until the very end of his time in Ireland when men came for him with torches and anger. He shuts the stench of smoke out, using the weight of Derek’s leg as an anchor to pull himself out of the past.

“I know you like scaring people, but you’re not going to pretend to push me off this tower, right? Because I don’t think my heart could take that,” Derek Hale jokes, though levity is maybe not the most natural tone on him.

Stiles laughs and claps Derek on the shoulder just a little too hard, though the werewolf is too musclebound for him to move much.

“What did I _just_ say?” Derek Hale demands.

“Please, I bet your head is hard enough to survive the fall.” Stiles wonders if a werewolf’s healing power is strong enough to come back from a tumble at this height. Stiles used to know warlocks and druids who would have tested it in an instant purely for the scientific—or magical—curiosity, but Stiles is not quite _that_ much of a dick.

“My mother dropped me on my head a lot to build up my skull strength.”

Stiles throws back his head to laugh at that. “Who knew you’d be funny. I thought dark and brooding was your main schtick.”

“What can I say? I’m an onion. I have layers.”

Stiles snaps his fingers twice and narrows his eyes. “I know that reference. How do I know that reference?”

“It’s Shrek,” Derek says, sounding incredulous at Stiles’ ignorance.

Stiles had been about to say Shakespeare, so that’s embarrassing. The eras of human pop culture have a tendency to get all jumbled up in his head. There’s just so much to keep track off, and it all changes so quickly, not to mention the series of centuries he spent dimension hopping. The sun and the sky know what happened during that time.

“You haven’t seen Shrek?” Derek continues, hand over his heart as if he’s about to go into cardiac arrest over Stiles’ lack of culture, but Stiles is willing to bet someone tied Derek to a chair and forced him to watch that movie.

“I guess you’ll have to show it to me sometime.” Stiles winks, satisfied when Derek’s pale cheeks turn a rosy red. Stiles has been working on his flirtatious wink for years and years, and he likes to think that he’s perfected the effect. Derek Hale’s extreme embarrassment seems to prove him right.

Their half hour lunch period disappears quickly, and Derek Hale soon begins to glance at his watch, but Stiles just stretches himself out a little more and lets one foot dangle off the ledge. “We should go,” Derek says, though he doesn’t sound like he believes it.

“Another minute,” Stiles murmurs. The sun cradles his face in its tiny fingers, the wind a comfort to his hair.

“What’s with these?” Derek plucks at the sleeves Stiles wears. “Aren’t you hot?”

Stiles lets one eye drift open. “I am hot.”

“Th-that’s not...I—” Derek splutters to a halt and eventually gives up.

Stiles rolls over and hauls himself to his feet instead of answering Derek’s question, and the two of them climb quickly down the ladder, emerging into the sunlight down below just as one of their managers walks by. She locks gazes with Stiles but sighs, rolls her eyes, and saunters off, no doubt to go hide out behind the storage shed to sneak a couple of cigarettes.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Stiles says, elbowing Derek Hale in the stomach in farewell, sauntering off without a second glance.

* * *

Night has fallen, spread across the town and the Preserve like a fruit jam left outside too long. The dark leaves its long, sticky fingers on the car windows and turns the glow of the streetlamps into dirty smudges, sidewalks soft beneath feet as cicadas whir among the trees.

Derek steps out of his Camaro and immediately begins to sweat beneath his leather jacket, but he’s a slave to the aesthetic, and so he suffers. Just behind him, the Betas tumble from Lydia’s little, blue Prius, dressed properly for the muggy heat. “How do we get in?” Scott asks Derek. He looks a little nervous—uneven jaw growing more crooked as he scrunches up his face and furrows his brow—but he always was a little bit of a goody-two-shoes.

Derek dangles the set of keys he’s given as a maintenance worker off one finger.

“Where’s Stiles?” Lydia says, her dress blowing in the heavy wind as she stares through the chain link fence.

“He’s always late,” Derek says. “He’ll be here.”

“What’s his last name?”

Derek hesitates. “I…I don’t know.” Stiles’ time card always seems to be half hidden behind another so that only his first name shows.

“Ho the Air Buds!” Derek turns and Stiles is just…there, standing on the other side of the Camaro. No footsteps, no scent, no thrum of a heartbeat leading up to his appearance—his arrival is like getting hit by a train.

“Did you hear him…?” Isaac whispers to Scott, and the other werewolf shakes his head, confusion writ plain across his face.

“How do you know Air Buds but not Shrek?” Derek asks.

Stiles shrugs as he ambles around the Camaro’s hood. He wears a long sleeved plaid shirt and dark jeans, though he doesn’t seem to be sweating, not like Derek is. “I like the dogs, and I got trash taste in movies.”

Derek jiggles his keys in the padlock on the fence—the tumblers always stick—until it finally falls open in his hand, and he drags the fence open, the metal clattering across the ground. He could get fired for this, if they’re caught, but he doesn’t think that would be all bad. He blinks, and there’s Stiles, standing on the other side of the fence, grinning at the rest of them. Derek glances back at the rest of the Betas, but they just shrug. Five pairs of eyes, and no one saw the kid move. Derek doesn’t understand it. Half of them are werewolves. Stiles shouldn’t be able to…Derek thinks there’s something different about him in the moonlight. It’s only half full, but it makes Stiles’ features sharper, and his eyes glint a dark red for just a second.

The amusement park is spooky at night without the lights or the people. The scent of fried food lingers, discernible even to the human nose, and a few pieces of trash, missed by the end of shift janitors, blow by, bright and white and a little bit forlorn in the dim glow of the moonlight.

“What do we actually do in an amusement park at night?” Scott asks as he steps almost hesitantly through the door. Boy will break into the school, the clinic, the goddamn police station, but he’s nervous about taking a walk through a park.

“Lots of things!” Stiles throws his arms out wide. “We can go _inside_ the rides. See their guts. We can play games. Hide and seek. Capture the flag. The world is our oyster.” He winks at Derek as he says this last part, though Derek isn’t sure what the innuendo is supposed to mean.

“You’re a walking cliché, you know that, right?” he says.

“It’s a carefully cultivated persona,” Stiles agrees with a laugh.

“You can flirt on your own time,” Lydia interrupts as she claps Derek on the shoulder, eliciting mocking twitters from the other Betas. “Let’s go.”

They head deeper into the park, the rides looming over them like skeletons half hidden in the dark. Shivers run down the back of Derek’s neck, the hairs there raised and prickling just like the claws beneath his nails.

The Betas have always had a proclivity for climbing on things that they shouldn’t, and Scott and Isaac quickly disappear to do as Stiles suggested and climb around inside the rides, though Allison looks a little bit offended that her boyfriend has abandoned her so quickly.

“Let’s play one of those shitty rigged games!” Stiles says and grabs Derek’s arm to drag him in the direction of the booths, gesturing for Allison and Lydia to follow. They wind up at the shooting range with the toy rifles, and Stiles jumps over the counter to set up the little round targets. Allison takes one of the guns first, and of course, she manages to hit all five discs, even with the game rigged against her, the toy spitting its bullets with a little rat-a-tat-tat. The metal targets ping as they go down, and Stiles cheers with each hit.

“Damn, girl! You good!” He sets the discs up again as Allison passes the gun to Lydia who takes it daintily, watching her manicure.

A raindrop hits Derek’s nose, and another three wet his shoulder in quick succession. Allison squeaks as several land on her head. When Derek looks up, the moon is half hidden by thick clouds, sprung up out of nowhere and growing fast.

“Ah, shit,” Lydia says, letting the gun drop to her side.

“Maybe it will pass quickly,” Derek says, but he knows that’s not the case. He can already feel the charge in the air, the pressure of a building storm.

Derek sees Stiles snap his fingers low at his side, and a different sort of static fills the air, heady with the scent of crumbling books and dark, thick bark. The storm clouds dissipate just as quickly as they sprung up, and the air stills back into its normal, placid, humid self.

Derek tilts his head to the side to look Stiles over, but he’s gone back to setting up the targets, looking as innocent as a newborn babe, and in that way, as suspicious as a thief in the night.

No one comments on the strange shift in weather patterns, though Derek shares a look and a shrug with Lydia. They shoot the targets a little while longer—Stiles never touches the gun—then switch to the ring toss, then the darts. Stiles disappears after blowing up the balloons for the dart game, slipping into the shadows without a word. Derek doesn’t notice he’s gone for a couple of minutes.

He chucks a dart at a green balloon and misses—the damn things are weighted weirdly, that’s what it is. “Lydia, do you sense anything?” he asks. “Is the place really haunted?”

“It’s weird.” Lydia turns around and leans up against the counter separating them from the colorful balloons. “There’s something under the surface of this place, but I can’t get a handle on it. And it’s not like I can fully control this banshee thing anyways.” She waves her hands to indicate her powers.

“Focal objects help, right? Where’s most haunted? We could go there, and you could…touch things,” Allison suggests. She plucks the dart from Derek’s hand and chucks it at the board, piercing a red balloon even in the dark.

“The Hotel is the most haunted.” Stiles reappears, once again undetected by Derek’s wolf.

“How much of that did you hear?” Derek demands, heart pounding. He’s starting to suspect that Stiles isn’t all human, but he doesn’t want to assume anything and accidentally expose Stiles to a whole world of death and blood and far, far too many claws.

“Just the bit about what’s most haunted,” Stiles says. But he winks. Derek hates him.

Scott and Isaac explode out from around the corner at the far end of the games row and bowl down the boardwalk towards the Derek and the others. Scott practically skids into Allison before he manages to catch himself, her hand out to steady him. “Ghost,” He huffs, flinging a finger back the way they came.

Derek glances at Isaac since he’s usually more coherent in stressful situations than Scott. “We were climbing around in the Cyclone, and we saw, I don’t know, a ghost.” Isaac shrugs, hands on his knees as he pants. “It looked like a man, sitting in one of the carts, but when we got close, it was gone.”

Stiles hides a grin by turning his head.

Allison grabs Lydia’s hand and gives it a little shake. “We should go.”

“Show us,” Derek says to Scott and Isaac.

As far as Derek knows, ghosts aren’t that dangerous, unless they’re poltergeists or something. It should also be said that Derek has never encountered an actual ghost before, doesn’t even know if they’re truly real, but when you were born a werewolf, it just makes sense to assume that anything and everything exists. He sees this as a chance to gather information, just in case this ghost tries to make actual trouble—it’s what Talia would do, he thinks.

It takes less than a minute to get from the games boardwalk to the Cyclone. The upper reaches of the ride hide in the darkness, the midnight blue rails gleaming wetly in the moonlight. The cars sit like bugs at the bottom, next to a set of wooden stairs, and as far as Derek can tell, there’s no ghost there.

Lydia steps forward, hand half raised, fingers trailing along the round lines of the car. Her hair blows gently in the wind, but other than that, she’s still. Derek wonders what she looks like to Stiles, but when Derek turns to look at him, he’s staring at Derek instead, eyes flicking up and down the length of Derek’s form.

Derek is glad for the darkness that covers up his blooming redness.

The heat of his blush is soon swallowed up by a rush of cold air across his neck, the hairs lifting, his wolf growling. When he exhales, his breath puffs out in front of him. Allison shivers and moves closer to Scott who’s also staring at the cloud of his own breath.

A form flickers into view, seated in the middle car, hands laid placidly on the railing in front of it. The ghost wears a once dapper three-piece suit, 1920s style, though it’s now threadbare and grey, a cravat untied around the neck. His face looks grey and young with a long nose and hair that flops forward over his forehead, appearing a little wet. His mouth droops forlornly, which Derek supposes makes sense, given the man is dead.

“Who are you?” Lydia asks, voice trembling just a bit, as it always does when she channels her banshee powers.

The ghost turns his head slowly to look at her, but before they can lock eyes, he flickers again and disappears like a television losing its signal.

“Holy shit, I can’t believe we just saw a ghost,” Isaac breathes as the temperature returns to normal around them.

Lydia looks back at them, slim eyebrows drawn together. “Whatever that was, it was no ghost.”

Well, that’s just great.

* * *

Stiles is having a little bit too much fun. The Beta werewolves all look so spooked and astonished by the sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance of the “ghost” that how could anyone expect him to _not_ use his powers to fuck with them however he can. Lydia the banshee throws an interesting wrench into his plans, but by Dia, that ‘not a ghost’ line was priceless, and the ripple of gasps that went through the werewolves—classic.

“Let’s go to the Haunted Hotel,” he suggests because there are so many ways he can play with them in there.

“Let’s not,” Derek says, but he’s very quickly outvoted by the rest of the Betas.

In just a few minutes, three werewolves, a banshee, and a human stand outside the Haunted Hotel, looking like the start of every bad joke ever, and Stiles has gotten himself distracted again, disappearing into the ride to set up a few fun little surprises for the little group.

He has to pause though, at one of the stairwells into the bowels of the hotel, hand pressed to the humidity soaked metal there. He has done this before, centuries ago, tested the waters with strangers and his magic, and it ended with torches reflected on water, but here he is, doing it all again and hoping it will be different this time since they are already inducted into the world of the supernatural.

Stiles pushes off the wall and gives himself a grin, though there’s no one else around to see it, and sets about weaving strands of power all through the ride—stray winds and hissing voices, and a few more “specters” to swoop by overhead.

He rejoins the group just as they begin to poke their heads into the tunnel where the little carts enter the ride. No one seems to have noticed his absence, as he wants it. “They say a boy died in here,” he says, amused by how easily Derek Hale, great, brooding werewolf, startles. “He was in a cart by himself, forgotten by his parents, when the ride stalled. No one noticed when he wandered off, and when the machinery started up again, he got caught by the swinging arms of the werewolf animatronic and choked to death.”

This is, most definitely, not true, but the Betas won’t know that when the little boy falls out of the rafters.

Derek Hale looks torn between vindication over his fear of animatronics and a desire to run for the hills.

Stiles leads the way into the ride, ducking his head under the fake cobwebs that rim the entrance, meant to send shivers down the spine without actually touching the park goers. Lydia clicks on her phone flashlight, sweeping it across the fake wooden panels on the walls which only look more unconvincing in the white light. Stiles wiggles his fingers down by his leg so that the illumination flickers then dies. The look Lydia gives Derek is priceless, full of apprehension and confusion.

They’re barely around the second corner when Stiles’ first trap springs. A shape, rather vague and indistinct, drops from the ceiling, rushing right past Scott’s face so that he squeaks and jumps onto Allison. The temperature drops considerably as it flies by, and every breath except Stiles’ puffs out in little clouds.

Lydia stops and stamps her foot. “What the hell is it?” she demands. “It’s got all the physical signs of a ghost, but it doesn’t _feel_ like a ghost.”

She seems to have forgotten that Stiles technically isn’t supposed to know she’s supernatural.

They continue on, deeper and deeper into the ride, hunted by the clanking and groaning of the animatronics, just to put Derek Hale on edge. Drafts chase them, and a child cries somewhere in the distance, a sound just on the edge of hearing that claws at everyone’s nerves with its never-ending keen.

The second trap springs in the crazy clown sitting room. Even Stiles kind of hates this place with its hyper-realistic doll faces staring down at him from five different shelves and its cracked porcelain clowns that creak as they move on their wires and the halting laughter that wafts through the entire room on a tinny breeze.

A child flickers into view on an overstuffed, yellow and pink striped armchair, a rope around his neck and an angry red line etched into the skin beneath. Deep, black circles ring his vacant eyes, and there’s no movement in his chest.

“Who are you?” Lydia demands, moving to the front of the pack.

The boy lifts his head to look her in the eyes. He opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a low, rasping wheeze. A clown leaps off the top shelf, snaps its wire, and lands on Derek Hale’s shoulder, its little hands clawing at his hair as it laughs in his ear. Derek Hale screams, properly screams, and digs what are no doubt claws into the clown’s filmy shirt to fling it across the room hard enough that it’s already chipped face cracks in two, right between the red circles on the cheeks.

By the time the clown commotion dies down and everyone remembers the little boy and turns to look, he’s gone, the chair empty but for a faint pattern of frost.

“I say we get out of here,” Scott says, a quaver in his voice. “I don’t like this. Something feels off.”

“Of course something feels off—there are fucking ghosts everywhere!” Isaac shouts.

Ah, but they’ll miss his grand finale.

Each member of the Pack turns to look at Derek as the ranking Beta, and he, still rattled and spooked by his encounter with the clown, nods his head vigorously.

Stiles thought werewolves were supposed to be brave. In his early days, in Ireland, he knew a wolf who would eat nails rather than back down from anything. He very quickly died of a nasty case of tetanus, but until then, he was the coolest person Stiles knew.

The Betas beat a hasty retreat with Derek Hale in the lead and Stiles at the back, scrambling to think of the best way to salvage this one, last scare.

They’re nearing the exit when it happens. It starts small, so small that it’s almost unnoticeable, and the werewolves catch it first, twitching their noses and glancing in either direction. Stiles picks up on it next—smoke, growing thicker and more pungent with each passing second until it coats the nostrils and the tongue.

The whoosh of flame comes next, great gouts of it rushing down the track towards them from either side. The Pack takes off running as well, Stiles right behind them, and they barrel down the last available path, out the entrance of the ride, and into the humid night. A man screams and screams and screams, the sound chasing them all the way out, and Allison stumbles and falls on the uneven sidewalk, Scott barely managing to catch her before she can hit the pavement too hard.

Stiles spins around to look, but the flames are gone, burnt out as if they’d never been there in the first place.

“What the hell was that?” Allison demands.

“I have no idea,” Lydia murmurs.

Well, it certainly wasn’t Stiles.


	3. Chapter 3

Talia Hale leans on the hood of Derek’s Camaro while Derek locks up, drumming her manicured nails against her other forearm as she looks out across the amusement park. “Ghosts, huh?” she asks.

Derek filled her in on all the weird shit that had gone down the night before as soon as he got home, and she decided she wanted to come see for herself, check if her Alpha senses could pick anything extra up, even in the daylight.

“Lydia thought there was something wrong with them,” he says. “But she didn’t know what.”

Talia hums and sniffs the air, but doesn’t seem to find anything conclusive.

“I want you to meet Stiles, too. I think…I think he’s weird.”

“Well, that’s not very nice,” Talia replies with a little laugh.

“No, I mean supernatural weird.”

Derek checks his watch. Five minutes to his start time, and he should be inside already, but if he wants Talia to meet Stiles, he’ll have to be late, and nerves clamor in his stomach at the thought, and he wants to crawl out of his skin.

“What’s his last name?” Talia asks.

Derek shrugs. “I have no idea. He’s got this impossibly strong scent. I’ve never encountered anything like it.”

“What’s he smell like?”

“Old books and electricity.”

Talia’s ever-drumming fingers come to a halt, and she scrunches her face up in thought. “Some magic users have strong scents. How long has he been in Beacon Hills?”

“He never said,” Derek realizes. In fact, Stiles barely gave him a straight answer to any question.

“What do you know about him?”

“He lived in Ireland for a while, he’s moved around a lot. He likes plants.” Said out loud like that, Derek barely knows a thing about Stiles.

Talia looks uneasy at the thought of a possible magic user in town that she knows nothing about, and Derek wonders if Stiles could really be…magic. He thinks about the disappearing rain and the sneaky expression on Stiles’ face every time something odd happened. But when Derek thinks of magic users, he thinks of people like Alan Deaton—purposefully vague, obnoxiously mysterious, terribly unhelpful, whereas Stiles smiles like an open book and chatters like a toy monkey with his gears wound tight.

“I’ll talk to Deaton, see if he’s heard of anyone like your Stiles,” Talia says. “Why don’t you get inside.” She can clearly smell his unease as the clock ticks to 9:01 AM, and he’s officially late. “I’ll wait around a while longer.”

Derek nods and hurries for the gate, hoping no one will notice as he slides into the office at 9:03 and punches his time card, trading his lunchbox for a tool belt at his locker. His radio crackles not a second later, summoning him to the Cyclone, the very place where they saw the first ghost last night, and trepidation dribbles down Derek’s spine.

He doesn’t fully understand why there are people at the park this early, yet here they are; children dragging their parents around by the arm, couples strolling along hand in hand in the fresh-born sun. It’s as humid today as it was yesterday, and the heat bakes the concrete and everyone who walks on it, soaking through Derek’s shoes. The scent of leftover trash and days-old food is particularly pungent in the heat, and Derek wishes he could turn off his werewolf nose for a little bit.

He arrives at the Cyclone to find the head of maintenance standing before the main control panel, looking absolutely befuddled. Derek is surprised, too—he’s never actually seen the super out on a call before. Her dark roots are starting to show through the dyed white of her hair, especially on the sides where it’s been buzzed short. She wears a gauge in one ear and a bar through the top of the other, another hoop in her nose. Derek thinks the park has a rule against such thing, but Clea doesn’t seem to give a damn.

“What’s the problem?” he asks, walking up to her.

Clea shrugs, throwing one hand in the air. “I have no idea.”

The control panel throws off sparks, and something groans up above in a way Derek doesn’t like. He sniffs subtly at the controls as if that might somehow help, but all he smells is ozone and metal.

“Something’s fried, but every diagnostic I run comes up clean,” Clea says, sounding peeved. “I don’t understand it. The Haunted Hotel is fucked up, too.”

“Opps, too far.”

Derek jumps out of his skin as Stiles appears by his elbow, spiky haired and grinning. “Stop _doing_ that!” Derek snaps.

“’Sup, Clea,” Stiles says, ignoring Derek. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Shouldn’t you be at your post?” she replies, though she doesn’t sound like she actually cares.

“You just said the Hotel is broke,” Stiles points out. “My bad.”

His bad? Derek looks at Stiles, really looks at him, wondering if it’s possible to see the difference between a normal person and a magic one. There are flecks of gold in his dark eyes, and all his features are slightly pointed, like old depictions of the fey, but Derek has seen a few other humans with that same sharpness. He still wears long sleeves under his red polo despite the overbearing heat, but he doesn’t look like he’s sweltering. If that’s not magic, Derek doesn’t know what is.

Of course, Stiles notices Derek’s scrutiny, and he flicks a grin in Derek’s direction, something knowing in his eyes, like they share some kind of secret.

“Just go press some buttons and see if you can make it work while we deal with this,” Clea orders. “Or take a nap. I don’t care.”

“Yeah, sure. Can I just take a peek first?” Stiles pushes forward to look at the control panel without waiting for permission. He sticks his nose right in the wires and sneezes, and electricity shoots through the entire box. Derek yanks him back by his collar before he can get fried, but Stiles is smirking like he always is. “Alright, I’m off. Derek, come by later?”

Derek nods, and Stiles turns and skips off, leaving Clea and Derek to stare at the control panel. As soon as he’s gone, the wires fizzle once again, and then the whole ride wakes up, the carts whirring around the track as if they were never broken.

“What the fuck?” Clea says.

Derek cranes his neck around to look for Stiles, but he’s disappeared completely. “You still need me?” he asks. It’s time to get to the bottom of this.

Clea shakes her head. “Go deal with the Haunted Hotel. I run one last test on this.”

After last night, the Haunted Hotel is the last place Derek wants to be, but that’s where Stiles is, so he hitches up his tool belt and sets off across the park. He spoke with Lydia pretty extensively last night, after they got back to the Hale house. She doesn’t think anything they saw was actually a ghost, despite rumors that the amusement park is haunted. She said she didn’t get that usual cold water feeling on the back of her neck, and Derek is starting to suspect that he now knows why. If Stiles really is magical, like Talia suspects, and if it really was him causing the ghosts last night, then there’s just one question left: why? Was it just mischief, a prank? Or something more malevolent? When Derek is with Stiles, he doesn’t see ill intent, but he’s never really meant a magic user without some kind of sketchy motive.

Stiles is chilling in the control booth when Derek arrives, spritzing his little plants with water. The miniature mum looks pale and frail, losing petals across the shelf when Derek steps into the small room. “Derek! How’s the Cyclone?”

“Magically fixed,” Derek says to see what kind of reaction he’ll get.

But Stiles just grins and puts his little spray bottle down. “That’s good. You come to fix my ride, too?”

Derek suspects Stiles is perfectly capable of fixing his own ride. “I’ve come to talk, actually.”

“Intriguing. What about?”

Here’s the trick. If Derek is wrong, he’ll reveal too much about his own nature and the existence of the supernatural—or Stiles will just think him crazy—and if he’s right, well, Derek doesn’t know what that will mean.

“I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to give me a straight answer,” he begins.

“I cannot do that,” Stiles interrupts.

“I’m being serious,” Derek says, piercing Stiles with a flat look. Stiles obviously gets the message because he falls silent and nods. “Are you supernatural?”

Stiles just stares at him, his whole face going blank in a way Derek has never seen before, and Derek thinks he maybe sees a hint of panic behind the void. So he goes a step further, extends an olive branch, so to speak, to hopefully put Stiles at ease. He glances outside first, just to make sure they’re alone. “I’m a werewolf.”

Relief pours off Stiles' face like a waterfall, and he laughs, throwing his head back just like he always does. “Oh, dude, I know. I knew the moment we met!”

“You—you did?”

“Well, duh. You werewolves have a very particular aura.” He says this like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but he’s still dodging Derek’s question in a way, so Derek presses forward, determined to get an answer.

“And what are you?”

“I’m a witch.” He hesitates as he says this, a hitch in his voice just before the last word, as if he’s not used to admitting it aloud, as if he’s worried about how Derek will react. Derek understands that. He’s felt that fear before, coming out to his parents, because no matter how well you know a person, you can never be sure how they’ll take the news.

“And everything that happened last night—that was you?”

A smile sneaks over Stiles’ face. “Guilty.”

“Why?”

“Because it was fun,” Stiles says with a shrug. “You should’ve seen your faces.” The smile clearly hides the nerves that are still there.

“And the animatronics?” he demands, a little bit outraged by that.

Stiles doesn’t look very ashamed at the accusation. “That was hilarious.”

Derek swats him on the arm, mouth gaping. “You dick! That was mean! I almost had a heart attack and died, like, five times!”

“I thought it was funny. That’s what counts.” Stiles giggles to himself, and Derek chases him out of the booth, cursing and wishing he had a towel to flick at Stiles’ back. Derek trips him right in front of a patch of grass, and Stiles falls over in a tangle of too-long limbs and an explosion of crumbling parchment paper and dark earth, and Derek realizes he’s been holding his scent back the entire time they’ve known each other.

Derek flops down beside him, head reeling from that heady scent. “You’re still a dick, but it’s a good thing I like dicks.” The double entendre is out of his mouth before he can stop it, and his face erupts into flame.

Stiles cackles, rolling around on the ground. “Oh, that’s a good one, that’s good. I like that.”

“I’m guessing you can fix the hotel yourself?” Derek says, hoping to cover up his embarrassment.

Stiles snaps his fingers, burgundy sparks popping off them, and something within the ride groans and clanks, and then the whole thing starts to work again. “I hate you,” Derek says. “All those times you made me go into the ride and terrorized me, when you could’ve just snapped your stupid fingers and fixed it.”

“But I’m so cute,” Stiles says, pillowing his chin with his hands. “How could you hate a face like this?”

“Easily,” Derek assures him.

Stiles sits up and looks down at Derek, dry grass stuck to his polo. “It wasn’t all me last night. The fire at the end—I think that might’ve _actually_ been a ghost.”

“You’re serious? You’re not fucking with me again?”

Stiles sketches a cross across his heart. “I was sure that the haunted rumors were just because of me. I didn’t actually think there was any truth to it. But come look at this.” Stiles hauls himself upright and offers Derek a hand to help him stand as well, then leads him back to the control booth, right up to his little shelf of plants. He nudges the mini mum with one finger. “I tied this one to the to the park’s energy, and look.” He gestures to the wilting branches and the discovered leaves. “Something’s wrong. I think we awoke something last night.”

“Awoke something?” Derek repeats. He does not like the sound of that.

Stiles nods and rubs at his chin. “I think so. Something feels different now, and look at my poor little baby.” He gives the mum another spritz of water, but it’s clear that the plant’s problem runs much deeper than a little dehydration.

“Do you think it’s malevolent?” Derek asks nervously, eyeing the Haunted Hotel through the window.

“Well, those flames last night certainly weren’t a nice, crackling bonfire. Do you know what we should do?”

“Tell my mom?”

Stiles punches him and gives him a shock of static electricity. “Dude, no. We don’t need your mom. I say we hold a séance. Get some answers for ourselves.”

Of course Stiles wants to summon a trigger happy ghost.

“Can you see if Lydia can come along? Having a banshee along would be fantastic.”

And of course he already knows that Lydia is a banshee.

“I’ll text her.” Derek doesn’t know when he agreed to this séance, but apparently, he has, because he’s pulling out his phone and shooting Lydia a message. He just knows he’s going to live to regret this.

A tiny fist knocks at the window of the booth, and the two of them turn to see a young girl staring at them through the window with large, round eyes. She holds a token between her clearly sticky fingers and smiles a gap-toothed smile.

Stiles glances at Derek, a serious gleam in his eyes. “Sorry, kid. Broken.” As he speaks his scent blossoms, and all the lights on the ride flicker and die.

“When will it be better?” she asks.

“Not today. Sorry.”

The kid’s bottom lip pokes out, but she sticks her token back in her pocket and walks off without another word.

“Better safe than sorry?” Derek guesses.

“Hopefully, the ghost is tied to the Haunted Hotel and not free to wander the whole park. Better to keep people out until we know for sure what the ghost’s intentions are.” Stiles pulls a wooden ‘Out of Order’ sign from beneath the control panel and props it up by the window. “I’ve dealt with ghosts before. If they’re malevolent, they’re a real bitch to get rid of.” He shrugs contemplatively. “Better than demons, I suppose.”

Derek sits down on the little stool and props his feet up on the opposite wall. “Have you done a séance before?” He doesn’t want to be a part of someone’s first séance.

“Of course I’ve done a séance before.” Stiles rolls his eyes, mock offended. “Who do you think I am? John Dee? Necromancy may not be my specialty, but you live long enough, you get around to all the different branches of magic. I could do a séance in my sleep.”

“How old are you?” Derek asks, but his phone dings at the same time, and Stiles uses the distraction to divert the conversation.

“Is that Lydia?”

Derek checks the message. “Yeah. She says sure. And that she knew you were weird.”

“Please tell her that I love her.”

Derek does as he’s told and gets a green heart emoji in return. “I’ve got to go back to work, unlike _some_ people. Want a ride home?”

“I don’t need one, you know. But sure.”

“Wait, you were serious about the pocket dimension?” Derek asks incredulously, remembering the first day they met—god, was that only a few days ago? It seems like they’ve known each other for ages.

Stiles nods and grins, and Derek shakes his head.

“That’s awesome.”

Stiles perks up, pleased by the compliment. “I’ll plan our séance.”

Derek eyes him suspiciously. “Will you really?”

“No, not at all.” Stiles shakes his head and laughs. “Winging it is more fun.”

“We’re going to die,” Derek sighs. “Okay, see you later, I’m going to go enjoy my last day among the living.”

“Bye, darling.” Stiles gives him a cheeky little wave as he leaves the control booth, and Derek isn’t going to dignify that with a response.

As he walks away, his phone rings, his mother’s photo showing up on the caller ID. He’s not supposed to be on his phone at work, but no one really seems to care about that, so he hides himself behind a shed and answers.

“I talked to Deaton,” Talia says.

Derek leans against the sun warmed metal wall and crosses one leg over the other. “That was fast.”

“I didn’t want to go to work.”

“I talked to Stiles,” Derek tells her. “He said he’s a witch.”

“Deaton spoke of an Irish legend about a witch named Miecyzslaw Stilinski. It’s said he’s as old as time itself and one of the most powerful creatures to walk the earth. He was fickle, though, more apt to use his power for mischief rather than good. The legends all say that he’s not to be trusted.” Talia pauses, and Derek can picture her shaking her head on the other end of the line. “Derek, if your Stiles is this same Miecyslaw, then you need to be careful. They say he summons storms and steals souls, and even the devil quakes before him. I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, if I were you.”

“Did you meet him in the parking lot?” His stomach churns at her words.

“He never showed.”

“But he was in the park five minutes after me…” Stiles is a witch, after all. Derek supposes it’s possible.

Derek has always heeded his mother’s advice, but what she’s saying doesn’t match up with the Stiles Derek knows. The Stiles who is mischievous, yes, but also funny and kind, if a little vague at times, and curious, and weird, and Derek’s new favorite person. So he does something he never thought he would. He disregards her words.

“Okay, Mom. I’ll stay away from him.” He’s never lied to Talia Hale before, but she can’t hear his heartbeat over the phone.

“Good. I need to think about how I want to handle him. We’ll talk tonight.”

“I have plans with Lydia tonight,” Derek says, nerves crawling in his stomach at the second lie, even though it’s actually only half a lie.

“Tomorrow then,” Talia says. Derek wonders if it’s just his imagination, or if she sounds a little spooked.

“Tomorrow,” he agrees, and they hang up.

Derek stuffs his phone back in his pocket and sighs, guilt wiggling in him for lying to his Alpha, and his mother. Derek Hale isn’t a goody-two-shoes—he’d punch anyone who’d dare suggest that—but there are certain things as a werewolf that you just don’t do, and lying to your Alpha is one of them.

He’d better be right about Stiles.

* * *

Stiles, Lydia Martin, and Derek Hale meet at the park gate at quarter to midnight. Derek Hale has probably been there since about 11:20, ten minutes before the appointed time, but Stiles gets distracted by an old spell book while he was gathering supplies for the séance and almost forgets what he’s supposed to be doing. He portals right up to Derek Hale’s Camaro and raps on the window, scaring the ever-living daylights out of him. Lydia sits in the passenger seat on her phone, looking bored.

“You’re very jumpy for a werewolf,” Stiles says as Derek Hale climbs out of the car, clutching his heart.

“You don’t play by the usual rules.”

Stiles grins at him. He’d forgotten what it was like to be accepted by someone not as he should be but as he was. “Derek Hale, I want to thank you.”

“For what?” Derek asks, leading the way towards the locked gate with his maintenance keys at the ready.

For not trying to burn him at the stake. “For accepting me. Many don’t.”

“My mother didn’t want me to.” Derek Hale fits the key into the padlock, and it creaks as he twists it, the mechanisms gummed up by the humidity.

Lydia looks him over and pops her gum as Derek fights with the gate. As always, she is dressed to the nines in a leaf patterned skirt and a green button up blouse, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the brown leather purse that dangles there. “So a witch, huh?”

Stiles lets sparks fly of his finger guns. “Yup.”

“Like the Sanderson sisters?”

“I actually met them,” Stiles says as Derek shoves the gate open, and the metal groans. Stiles’ time in Salem was a riot, and not always in a good way. “They’re right pricks. Tried to take me down with them.”

Lydia’s mouth drops open. “So Hocus Pocus is real?”

“What’s Hocus Pocus?” Stiles asks.

Derek finally gets the gate unlocked, and it squeals as it opens, hinges angry. “Is that legend true?” he asks, staring out across the dark park.

Derek told Stiles what his mother had learned from Deaton as they drove home that afternoon. Stiles hadn’t heard his real name spoken aloud in eons, though Derek butchered the pronunciation. “I’m nowhere near as old as time. That would be ridiculous.”

“So how old are you?”

“No clue. I slept for a while. Dimension hopped for another long while. Time works differently in different places.” Stiles shrugs and steps through the gate, and as he does, the very atmosphere changes. The air is still hot, but it’s dry, scorching even, and the wind throws dust in his face, stinging like bits of glass. He flicks his wrist, and the barrage dies down, but there’s something fighting him, a presence that weighs down on the entire park like the ocean at its deepest point.

A challenge.

Stiles likey.

“That’s certainly death,” Lydia murmurs as her hair sways around her shoulders.

They walk quickly towards the Haunted Hotel, the witching hour growing closer more quickly than Stiles would like, and he hitches his satchel higher up onto his shoulder. “You ever gone up against a ghost before?” he asks, putting his long legs to good use to eat up the cement blocks beneath his feet.

“I didn’t even know they were real before yesterday,” Derek admits. He looks nervous and tugs at the hem of his leather jacket, a hint of fangs beneath his lips.

“You have a literal banshee in your Pack,” Stiles points out.

“I sense death,” Lydia says. “That doesn’t necessary mean ghosts.”

Stiles takes the lead across the park. “The most important thing is to stay calm. Ghosts can latch onto strong, negative emotions and use them to hurt you, control you, even possess you. Derek, you’ll be particularly susceptible since werewolf emotions are naturally heightened. So you’ll have to be careful. My powers should help suppress some of that, but not all of it.”

They turn the corner, and there’s the Haunted Hotel in all its glory, huge and hulking and hungry. Flames flicker in the upper windows, half translucent, but, as if they sense Stiles’ gaze, they disappear, and the whole ride goes dark.

“I do not like this,” Derek Hales says.

“You don’t like anything,” Stiles reminds him.

“That’s fair. Let’s do this.”

“Once the séance starts, don’t speak,” Stiles continues as the hotel’s shadow falls across them, and Derek Hale shivers. “Too many voices will confuse any spirits we conjure or draw unwanted ones to us. Whatever you do, stay within the circle, and keep your hands on the totem. Got it?”

Derek and Lydia nod.

“Good. Lydia, I wanted you here to amplify shit and make it easier to make contact with the spirit, guide and direct the board to picking up the ghost we want to talk to.” Stiles grins, devlish and free. “This is going to be fun.”

And they walk into the hotel.

The air smells faintly of smoke and ash and electrical charge. Stiles sneezes. “We won’t go too deep. Just inside the entrance should be fine.”

“Can ghosts possess animatronics?” Derek asks nervously.

Stiles stares at him for a moment. “I honestly do not know.” He doesn’t mention that he’d kind of like to find out, though Lydia can clearly tell what he’s thinking and wants to find out as well.

He sets out preparing the séance circle: a line of coarse salt in a four-foot radius, candles representing the four elements sat at the four cardinal directions, a few crystals with purifying energy strewn about the circle, and his original Ouija board in the very middle. It’s not only his first Ouija board, but the first one ever made, carved by his own two hands from the branch of a Nemeton tree.

Stiles, Derek, and Lydia sit down in a little triangle with the board between them, and they each place their fingers on the totem. With a whisper, Stiles lights the four candles and seals the circle.

“I, Miecyzslaw Stilinski, seal this circle so that none who bear ill will may pass, but I open this board as a conduit so that any spirit wishing to communicate may do so,” he intones. Derek gulps, Adams Apple bobbing, and Lydia’s eyes go a little vacant as her head tips back. “I seek the spirt of fire which walks these halls. Are you here? Will you speak to us?”

For a long while, nothing happens, and Derek Hale’s eyes dart from side to side, his mouth poised to say something, but Stiles gives him a sharp look and shakes his head.

“Spirit, will you speak to us?” he repeats, power in his voice so that the room pulses and burgundy sparks jump across the Ouija board. Derek Hale’s nostrils flare, and his irises flash electric blue as he inhales. Lydia’s lips move silently, and she closes her eyes, magnifying the power sweeping the room.

The totem trembles beneath their fingers and then moves, skating across the board in a series of tiny jerks until it reaches YES. Stiles grins fiercely. That moment of first contact is always the best, the most exciting moment of any spell, not knowing if the spirit will be helpful or try to kill you, that anticipation…there’s nothing like it.

“Are you the spirit of fire we met the night before?”

The totem stays on YES.

“Can you tell us your name?” Stiles asks. He can feel Derek Hale’s fingers trembling against his.

The air in the room shivers with a wave of heat. I-D-O-N-T-R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R.

That’s not surprising. A lot of ghosts lose track of their human selves after a while, especially if they had traumatic deaths, as this one clearly did.

“How long have you been here?” What he means is, how long have you been dead, but it’s not always a good idea to remind a spirit of its demise. You never know how they’ll react.

F-I-F-T-E-E-N-Y-E-A-R-S.

2005\. Stiles has met older ghosts, but that’s still a long time to be stuck in one spot, reliving a horrible moment over and over again. Perhaps they’re still young enough that they’ve maintained most of their humanity.

The totem begins to move while Stiles is still formulating his next question, and the temperature in the room drops and drops and drops until their breath puffs in the air and Derek shivers in his coat.

I-B-U-R-N-E-D-I-B-U-R-N-E-D-I-B-U-R-N-E-D-I

The totem moves faster and faster as it spells out the same phrase over and over again, jerking their hands around the board, and at the far end of the room, a fire erupts from nothing, racing around the walls until it’s formed a solid ring. Derek Hale tries to jerk his fingers away, but they’re stuck fast to the wood.

“Enough,” Stiles booms, zapping the totem, and the fire rages closer to their little circle.

I-W-I-L-L-B-U-R-N-E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G-A-S-I-B-U-R-N-E-D.

Stiles can feel the heat on his back, scorching the little hairs there, and he coughs as smoke begins to fill the room. Things seem to be going sideways very quickly. Even Lydia Martin looks nervous.

“Stiles,” Derek Hale mouths. His eyes flicker blue over and over again as he struggles to rein in his fear and his protective instincts.

H-A-L-E.

Blue lights flash within the flames, the same color as Derek’s eyes, and a tentacle reaches out of the still raging fire, rearing up towards the ceiling before it comes crashing down again, right for Derek Hale’s head. It smashes into the protective circle, spraying fire everywhere and sending cracks of light through the shield. Derek jumps, his fingers flying off the totem, his hand landing perilously close to the salt ring.

Red claws scrabble against the wards beside him, hungry and desperate, and while Lydia grabs Derek’s arm to pull him closer to safety, Stiles seizes a crystal off the floor, crumbling it to dust with a burst of magic, and he flings it into the flame of the navy blue water candle. The wick flares, blue fire leaping right out of the circle and exploding, banishing the inferno roaring around them.

Stiles seizes control of the totem and sweeps it in a figure-eight around the board. “I close this board as a conduit and sever contact with the spirit world. Leave this place in peace, spirit, and do no harm.” The dismissal would be more powerful if Stiles knew the ghost’s name, but this will have to do.

The blue candle washes away the spirit fire, forcing it into the back halls of the ride, and Stiles throws all of his shit into his satchel and stands. “Time to go.”

Derek and Lydia scramble upright as Stiles breaks the circle, and then Stiles shoves the big bag of coarse salt at Lydia’s chest. “Chuck this at anything that moves.”

“Something’s wrong,” Derek says. “What is it?”

“The spirit’s latched onto you,” Stiles explains as he drags Derek into a run. They stumble out of the ride just as something roars from deep within it, a deep, animalistic sound, and then a fireball shoots out the front entrance. Derek tackles Stiles and Lydia to the ground. The flames sweep into the sky in a great loop and then come racing back down, directly at them as something screams. Stiles rolls on top of Derek and flings his hand into the air, sparks flying as the cannonball collides with his wave of power. Fire jets away in every direction, and Stiles conjures more power as the weight bearing down on him increases, digging into the earth and into Derek Hale who gasps beneath him.

Flames rage all around them, the smallest bubble of safety between them and the spirit, and Stiles can feel the heat even through the barrier and hear the crackle of the flames, and his throat seizes, the stench of burning flesh appearing in his nose. He screams because he will not go through this again, will not fall backwards into his past, though dark fingers already wrap around his wrists, his ankles, ready to drag him down, down, down.

Lydia throws a fistful of salt into the air, and the flames recoil, giving them enough room to force themselves upright then run for the gate. Lydia tosses salt behind them until the bag is empty, slowing the ghost’s unrelenting pursuit. Derek shoves both of them through the gate and stumbles through behind them, and the fire explodes against the fence, dissipating into nothing.

Stiles flops to the ground and heaves a sigh, relieved that he can feel the park’s energy return to some semblance of normal, though there’s an edge to it, a bite, something hiding beneath the placid surface.

“That was…” Lydia begins. “Holy shit.” She’s still standing, but her knees are clearly trembling, and she shoves her hands through her hair to cover up the tremor there, too.

“The ghost is tied here, so that’s good,” Stiles says. “Someone burned to death here in 2005. If we could figure out who, that would make things a lot easier, but I don’t think we have that much time.”

“Why not?” Derek asks, still eyeing the park as if something else was going to jump out of the darkness.

“We’ve woken it. There’s no knowing what it will do tomorrow, and it’s taken interest in Derek, so that’s no good.”

Derek takes several steps away from the still open gate. “What’s it want with me?”

“A body, probably. With a living vessel, it would be able to leave the park and go wherever.” Stiles sticks out a hand for help up, and Derek hauls him to his feet. “We’ll come back tomorrow night. I’ll shut down the park, make sure no one will be in danger during the day.”

“How are you going to shut down an entire amusement park?” Lydia asks, skeptical.

Stiles gives her his patented ‘bitch, please’ look. He closes his eyes, inhales, and stretches a hand towards the sky. Storm clouds crackle, but no rain falls. Instead, a massive shard of lightning crackles from the darkness and hits the city’s main transformer with a boom. Immediately, all the city lights flicker and die, plunging them into darkness but for the sliver of moon overhead.

Lydia tsks, rolls her eyes. “Well, that seems like overkill.”

“Overkill is my middle name,” Stiles says with a grin. “Let’s keep this between the three of us for now. Too many werewolves will only complicate matters, I suspect.” He gives Derek a look. “And maybe don’t tell your mom. I don’t think she likes me.”

Derek Hale pulls a face. “I can’t lie to her.”

“Don’t be a baby,” Lydia scoffs. “Lying is easy.”

“No, I physically can’t lie to her. She’s my Alpha,” Derek says as he glares at her. Lydia just shrugs.

“I can help with that.” Stiles rifles through the pockets of his satchel, pulling out several tiny vials of powders and a scrap of purple cloth. He dumps a few vials out, murmuring over them as he does and then sets them on fire with the tip of his finger, bundling it all together in the cloth and tying it off with a scrap of twine. He tosses it at Derek who snatches it from the air and gives it a sniff.

“You’re a deus ex machina,” Lydia mutters, and Stiles shoots finger guns at her again.

“Yup, and I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

Stiles stays behind while Derek and Lydia drive off, watching the dark and empty park. That ghost could have very easily been him on several occasions. Flames lurch and scramble in the back of his mind, outlining a black stake, and he swallows heavily. Nerves flutter in his stomach, and he squirms as he turns to leave the park behind until tomorrow—it’s not a feeling that he likes, since he hasn’t been nervous like this in several centuries. He’s not worried about dealing with the ghost but about slipping into the past at the wrong moment, allowing someone to get hurt.

But it will all be fine, he’s sure.

It has to be.


	4. Chapter 4

When Derek arrives at the amusement park, he has to lie down in the back of his car for ten minutes because he just spent all day lying to his mother, and now he feels sick. Stiles’ spell worked, but with each new lie, Derek became more and more convinced that the next time would be time that the spell failed. Lydia spent the day at the library, searching the newspapers and city records for deaths in 2005.

Beacon Hills has had a lot of mysterious deaths and disappearances over the years, but she didn’t find anything fire related at the amusement park.

When Derek hears Lydia’s car pull into the parking lot, he sits up and climbs out. Lydia is dressed to the nines, as always, in her brown leather jacket, red wine dress, and four inch heels. “You couldn’t dress comfortably?” Derek asks.

“You can’t hunt ghosts if you ain’t cute,” she replies and flips a lock of her hair over her shoulder.

“Sure.”

“Your boy is late again.”

“He’s not…he’s not my boy,” Derek sighs.

“Who’s not whose boy?” Stiles is sitting on top of Derek’s car, probably scuffing his paint job.

“Nothing,” Derek says quickly before Lydia can embarrass him further. “Shall we go hunt a ghost?”

“We shall.” Stiles leaps languidly down from Derek’s car, hands stuck in his pockets, and strolls over to Derek and Lydia.

“Where’s all your stuff?” Lydia asks, looking over Stiles’ empty hands and bagless shoulders. He wears a black blazer over a dark blue shirt, and his collarbones stick out of the V-neck in a way Derek is pretending not to notice.

“I can put voids in my pockets. Witch, remember?” Stiles grins and pulls an entire baseball bat out of his jacket. “I warded this with a couple of power runes and coated it in wolfsbane. Pretty cool, huh?”

He stuffs it back in his jacket while Derek unlocks the front gate. The wind that rushes out is cold and smells of ash and smoke. It raises the hackles on Derek’s wolf, and he suddenly knows for a fact that everything is going to go very wrong.

* * *

Stiles takes the lead as they enter the park, extending his witchy senses to try and find the ghost before it can find them. He takes the tiny mum he tied to the amusement park from his pocket to check on it, and it’s not looking good—the leaves are drooping and even a little bit crispy. “Derek Hale, how do you feel about being bait?” he asks with a grin.

Derek Hale narrows his eyes and scowls. “Do I have a choice?”

“No, not really.”

Derek shoves two thumbs-ups into the air. “Then I feel great about it.”

“Fantastic. Okay. Here’s the plan.”

Stiles lays it all out for the two of them, and then they all get into place. Derek Hale stands in the center of the park’s main thoroughfare, awkwardly wringing his hands while he waits for the signal, and Lydia hides nearby. Stiles races around setting things up for the grand plan and hoping that the ghost doesn’t catch wind of them before he has everything ready.

When things are good to go, Stiles ca-caws, and he sees Derek Hale’s shoulders tense in preparation, and then he shifts, letting his wolf’s aura seep through the park, and it doesn’t take long for the ghost to pick up on it. The wind rattles around the buildings and shakes the roofs as it picks up speed and ferocity and races towards Derek.

Derek takes off running, jumping to the left and pouring on as much speed as his too-tight, skinny jean clad legs can muster while Lydia tries to track the ghost to make sure it doesn’t go rogue. Derek races right through their trap, unhindered by sigils carved into the wood of the stalls on either side of the thoroughfare to form a slightly modified pentagram, but when the ghost passes over the first invisible line, the whole thing triggers, red flashes of light rushing around the pentagram like a series of cameras going off, and the ghost smashes up against the other side, pulses of energy rippling all around the trap.

“Woo!” Stiles yells, flinging his arms in the air as Derek Hale stumbles to a stop , Lydia stepping out of the shadows to catch him before he can fall. “Everyone okay?”

“What do we do now?” Lydia asks.

The three of them converge so they can stare into the trap. The ghost doesn’t yet have a solid shape, preferring to whiz about the enclosed space like a gale force wind through a forest. “Now, you’re going to try and communicate with it,” Stiles says. “If we can figure out who it is, we’ll have an easier time banishing it.”

“Yeah, cool, I’ll just talk to a ghost,” Lydia mutters, but she approaches the caught spirit with Stiles and Derek Hale pressed close behind her. Lydia reaches out a hand, just the faintest of tremors in her fingers, and as she touches the invisible barrier, everything goes wrong, because of course it does.

Stiles tips backwards. He smells woodsmoke and burning sap, and then he’s falling, crashing through the ground like it’s smoke, a fog which envelops him, dark grey, and there are shapes circling him, building form from the smoke, and when he lands, they’re all around him, a ring he cannot break.

He can hear shouting, but it’s as indistinct as the shapes. He knows what they’re saying anyways. He struggles upright, moving as if through snow, and he reaches within himself, takes hold of his power, it’s not there, tucked out of sight and out of reach behind a towering wall of intertwined bushes, their limbs locked and sharp with thorns that prick his mind when he tries to wriggle through him so that he bleeds memories across the mindscape.

A boy in the forest, a long cape about his shoulders, his expression hidden in shadow.

A spear striking water, skewering fish.

Fists raised to the air.

Flames which flicker, dance upon the air, accompanied by their children, the tiny sparks.

Stiles staggers away from that memory but falls right into the arms of the shadowy ring encasing him, and hard hands grab his arms, his shoulders, bear him aloft, and though it feels as if they begin to walk, they also blip to their next destination, just like in a dream.

Except usually, Stiles has more control over the dream.

The wind blows.

A tall stake beckons him, clad in its skirt of stripped branches and dry brush.

Stiles smells smoke again, stronger and stronger, burning his nose from the inside out, and he struggles against the ghostly hands which bind him, but it’s no good. His power, his being, his identity has deserted him. Hundreds of years, thousands, maybe, and he still hasn’t figured out why.

Then he’s tied to the stake, rough ropes cutting into his wrists and ribs and elbows. It hurts as badly in this dreamscape as it did that miserable day.

But that’s nothing, compared to what’s to come.

It begins in his toes. Quietly, almost like a lover’s fingers upon his calves, but it grows—oh, does it grow. The heat burrows into him, caresses his bones, beckons for him to scream with all his might because this is what he and all his kind have always feared. Burnt away to ash, there’s nothing left to come back, no spirit to pass on as it’s been consumed along with his bones.

His scream rips something free within him, and those thorns are gone, absorbed by his magic, and suddenly, the flames are his, rather than his attackers. They churn around him, growing faster, stronger, hotter, flashing with impossible colors, spiraling out from his center like a vast hurricane, consuming everything—everyone—in sight.

The screams which wreck the air are no longer his own.

And, free of his bonds, Stiles falls, crashing through smoke and ash and into darkness.

* * *

They’ve lost Stiles, that much is clear. He’s paralyzed on his knees, trembling, his earth and paper scent coiling off him in waves, tinged with ever-growing rot, and within the circle, the captured ghost rages, still formless like smoke. Its rage is almost enough to knock Derek off his feet.

Derek glances at Lydia. “So…what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Call your mom?”

“Oh god, no.” Talia Hale might actually kill him for that. Cavorting with a witch. Angering a ghost. Putting a member of her pack in danger. “We just need to wake Stiles up.” Carefully. Since he’s throwing off enough power to crisp a reindeer. “You got a long stick?”

Lydia smacks him. “We’re not poking him with a stick.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas?”

Lydia pauses, crosses her arms, taps her foot, and purses her lips, eyes narrowed. “No.”

So the two of them spread out to go find a long enough stick to safely poke the live wire witch with. Derek finds a pool cue in the faux gambling hall, and he twirls it around as he carries it back across the amusement park.

In the short time Derek has known him, Stiles has been infallible, and it makes Derek’s wolf tremble and snarl to see him rendered motionless by such invisible bonds. All Derek wants to do is help him. And hold him. And keep him safe forever.

_(He forgets the bit where Stiles’ forever is a whole lot longer than his)._

Derek meets Lydia back at their pentagram. The scene hasn’t changed except that Stiles has crumpled forward, elbows braced limply against the ground, and tiny hints of flame flicker within the ghost’s ever roiling form. Lydia holds one of the metal sheppard’s hooks that they use on the lights, and she passes it to him. “I’m not poking the witch. He’s your boyfriend. You do it.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Derek protests, but he takes the hook since it’s longer than his pool cue. He stands about seven feet from Stiles, metal pole clenched in hands that he’s embarrassed to admit are sweaty, and he swallows, throat sticking, then prods Stiles on the back.

Nothing happens with Stiles, but within the circled pentagram, small tongues of red and yellow begin to flicker within the grey storm of the raging ghost.

Derek glances at Lydia, and she nods for him to try again. Prod a trembling wolf, and you’re going to get the claws, so what happens when you poke a frozen, immortal, god-knows-how-powerful witch? Oh, his mother is so going to kill him for being so reckless if she ever finds out about this.

Derek pokes Stiles in the head.

He has never regretted something so thoroughly or instantly.

Red lightning crackles off Stiles’ skin, growing in power and ferocity until it explodes off him, throwing Derek off his feet. He crashes through the flimsy wood wall of the building behind him, his claws popping out as he tumbles across the floor, digging into the cement until he skids to a halt, dust dancing wildly all around him. Through the Derek-sized hole in the wall, he can see Stiles encased in a growing ball of red lightning. Stiles’ knees lift off the ground, feet dragging across the ground until those pop free of gravity’s pull as well.

The trapped ghost matches the movement of the red lightning within its own orb prison, and the stench of smoke and burning meat pulsing across the park. Derek’s eyes water at the strength of it.

Cracks form in the sidewalk under Stiles’ feet, spreading towards the delicate chalk line of the pentacle. Derek hauls himself upright, braced on a booth full of stuffed animals, and starts to drag himself forward, eyes locked on Stiles’ slowly rising form. A gale force wind pushes against him, but he growls, heat flashing through his eyes, and he claws his way forward—literally. He climbs through the hole in the wall and is almost knocked off his feet as he loses the slight protection the building gave him. Stiles’ hair stands on end, and his clothes whip in the wind, revealing a dark swirl of tattoo ink across his midriff.

Step by step, Derek forces his way across the short space between them. He spies Lydia hiding behind the counter at the shooting range, a large scrape on her cheek. Stiles’ magical storm rips up bits of the boardwalk, flinging shards of wood in all directions, and Lydia ducks under the counter to avoid a particularly sharp plank. Derek can hear the ground cracking all around him as fingers of red electricity seek him out, pain sparking across his skin at their touch. But he pushes forward regardless, stepping through the shell of the lightning orb encasing Stiles.

Pain, hot and fast, rushes through his body, but in two steps, he’s inside the eye of the storm, almost collapsing to his knees as his muscles jitter outside his control. His wolf snarls, helps him regain control, and Derek reaches up to grab Stiles’ foot.

Electricity slams through him, and Derek thinks he’s burning up, starting with his feet, but he grits his teeth, and he pulls Stiles towards the ground, and he says the witch’s name.

Says it once, twice, three times, and watches as Stiles blinks, eyes torn by red light.

“Stiles.”

Stiles blinks a fourth time, and when his eyes open again, Derek can see his dark brown irises, rather than the scary red glow of his magic. When Derek smiles at him, the electrical storm dies away, and Stiles falls the last few feet into Derek’s arms, the two of them collapsing to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Derek sizzles, and he can smell his own burning hair, but he keeps a firm grip on Stiles, wanting him to know that he’s not alone. Stiles fumbles for his pant legs, muttering under his breath in Irish. He pulls the fabric up, pushes down his socks, and Derek sees the thick, ropy burn scars scoured into his calf. Stiles touches them, closes his eyes, murmurs in a voice even Derek’s wolf hearing can hardly make out, “They’re old, they’re old, they’re old.”

“Guys.” Derek looks up, and Lydia is pointing over their heads at the trapped ghost. Cracks spiderweb through the concrete, breaking up the chalk lines, mirrored in the now half-opaque bubble in which the ghost is trapped. The spirit storms around its cage, its form made of smoke and fire, and each collision with its shell makes the cracks grow wider.

“Shit,” Derek and Stiles say at the same time, and then the ghost smashes into the barrier one last time, and it shatters, releasing the angry spirit upon the amusement park once more.


	5. Chapter 5

The ghost goes right for Derek. It rears high into the sky, a single, grey tentacle made of smoke and fire, and then it barrels towards Derek and Stiles, still crouched on the ground. Stiles throws up a hand, and a red shield flares up between them and it, knocking the ghost off course. It whizzes away, forming a ball in the sky, and then it roars, and there’s such anger and pain and even fear in the sound that Derek’s eyes well up. Then the ghost bursts apart, escaping to every corner of the amusement park.

“Well, that’s not good,” Lydia says.

But the ghost can wait. “Are you okay?” Derek asks Stiles who trembles on the ground, knees drawn to his chest, hands pulling up his pant legs, pushing down his socks, mumbling, “They’re old, old, you’re not there,” over and over again as he rubs his shins. Mottled, red scars mar his skin, turning white for just a moment from the pressure of his fingers.

Derek takes Stiles hands and clasps them together between his, stopping their compulsive motion. “Look at me,” he says. Stiles’ normally dark eyes spark burgundy. “Are you okay?” Derek says each word slowly, distinctly, giving them weight so that Stiles has no choice but to focus on them, drawing him back from wherever he’s been trapped.

Stiles nods, flicks a grin across his face, and pushes his pant legs back down as if nothing happened. He seizes Derek’s hand and uses it to heave himself upright. “Where’d the ghost go?”

Derek points towards the sky. Streaks, like shooting stars, zip across the sky, smacking into an invisible boundary at the edge of the park, though cracks spider web away from each impact, and Derek wonders how long it will take the ghost to break out.

“What’s the new plan?” Lydia asks, one perfect eyebrow arched.

Stiles taps his chin and purses his lips. “Let me think.” His eyes fall on Derek, and he smiles in a way that Derek certainly does not like. Derek doesn’t know how he does it. How he just shuts away whatever he just went through and puts on that face of unassuming ease. “How do you feel about being possessed?”

“I thought you said that would be bad.” Derek crosses his arms and glares at Stiles.

“I mean, yeah,” Stiles says with a shrug. “But ghosts should be easier to exorcise from a physical form, or something.”

Lydia shoves his shoulder. “You’re just making this shit up, aren’t you?”

“I mean, duh. Isn’t that what everyone does?” Stiles grins, eyes glittering in the park lights.

“We’re so totally going to die, aren’t we?” Lydia sighs as she pinches the bridge of her nose, and Derek nods in agreement.

Stiles’ grin widens, and he flashes finger guns at the two of them.

“Yoo hoo!” he yells at the sky. “Werewolf for dinner!” Then he grabs Lydia’s hand, and the two of them run off, leaving Derek standing in the wreckage of the boardwalk.

He gulps and looks up at the sky where all the sparking threads of the ghost have coalesced into one single beam that is currently speeding towards him. This is going to hurt.

And hurt it does. The ghost crashes into him, locking itself inside his ribcage, fingers pressed between the bones, wrapped around his heart, burning like a candle tipped over onto the hand, and Derek is falling, and when he lands, ass flat on the ground, there’s a man standing before him, his back to Derek, long cloak flapping in the wind as smoke swirls all around them. He turns, slowly, and he’s a half-remembered dream of blue eyes and a smile Derek hasn’t seen in fifteen-odd years.

* * *

“Are we just going to leave him there?” Lydia demands as Stiles drags her along by the hand.

He glances behind them to where Derek twitches on the ground. “I have a plan.”

“Do you?”

Not really, but when has he ever?

He leaps over the counter of the duck pond, and he and Lydia hide behind it, peeking over the top to watch as Derek gets possessed. Slowly, the twitching stops, and Derek falls still, limbs akimbo on the ground. Then he sits up, pats his entire body as if checking that it’s actually real, and stands, wobbling on his new-to-him limbs. Stiles checks him out with his Third Eye—Derek is wreathed in smoke and grey flames. The ghost. Fully in possession.

Derek spins, moving as is a puppet caught on strings, and begins to walk towards the park’s exit. “Let’s move,” Stiles says and bounds back over the counter.

“What’s the plan?” Lydia hisses again, trying to snag the back of his blazer. Stiles just grins at her. She huffs. “You’re a terrible leader.”

Stiles rifles through his pockets as they sneak up on Derek. With a physical body, the ghost can now leave the place he’s tied too—i.e. the amusement park—but it also has most of the physical limitations of a body, albeit with some increased abilities depending on the strength of the ghost, and Stiles just put him in the body of a werewolf, so that’s great.

“We need to find out the ghost’s name,” Stiles whispers. The ghost moves slowly, still getting used to his new body. “Then we can banish it. And now that it’s physical…”

“It can talk to us,” Lydia finishes.

Derek stiffens, sensing them, perhaps, and turns like lava oozing down a mountainside. His eyes glow a bright blue, and the smile that curves his lips is not his own. “Witch. Banshee,” he says.

“Ghost,” Stiles replies.

Derek tips his head, salutes with two fingers.

“Who are you?”

“You know, I still can’t quite remember. It’s all…smoky, up here.” He waves one hand around his ear. Then he pats his chest. “I know this name though. Hale…” He trails off. His inflection is different, now that it’s not Derek Hale in charge—the consonants are a little sharper, the voice a little higher.

“Let us help you,” Stiles entreats, though he knows it’s a lost cause after all the rage he’s felt coming off the ghost.

“You’re willing to help me find vengeance?”

Of course Stiles is. He and the ghost are the same, both savaged by fire and people with tiny minds. Whoever killed this ghost deserves just as dark a fate, in Stiles’ opinion, but the nudge Lydia gives his elbow says otherwise.

“Do you know who killed you?” Stiles glances at Lydia so she knows he’s heard her opinion. Her face is scrunched up—brow furrowed, lips slightly pursed, concern writ large in her eyes.

“I remember…silver,” Derek murmurs, his voice faraway.

Lydia’s nudge turns into a pinch, and Stiles looks over at her again. “Allison,” she mouths.

Stiles squints at her. Allison? The it hits him—silver; the Argents. Of course, Stiles knows about the Argents—the family has been around, hunting the supernatural, for generations. Stiles hadn’t realized Allison was one of them—though she’s probably been ostracized for dating Scott. This ghost will not differentiate between Allison and their real killer. They’ll probably slaughter every single Argent they can find.

“Sorry. This time we can’t help you.”

Lydia sighs with relief.

The smirk on Derek’s face is not one Stiles has ever seen before, and it sends chills down Stiles’ spine. Then Derek lunges towards them, moving impossibly fast, claws popping out of his fingers, eyes electric blue and glowing so brightly they leave afterimages in his wake.

* * *

Derek stands across from the man in the trench coat while smoke swirls around their legs and something groans in the background, like wind moving through old metal. “Sorry about that, kid,” the ghost says, and Derek stumbles back, tripping on his heel and landing heavily on his butt.

Because he knows that voice. He hasn’t heard it in years and years, not since he was small.

“Uncle Peter?” he says, and his voice is as young and small as it was when he was ten years old and Peter disappeared from the Hale house. He and Talia had been fighting, which was nothing new, but this one had been particularly bad, and so when Peter stormed out and didn’t return, no one thought much of it. But months turned into years, and Peter never returned. Talia thought he’d finally quit the family for good, as he’d always threatened to do, but Derek always hoped he’d return one day.

And now…

“What did you say?” the ghost asks, and he steps towards Derek, the smoke rippling away from his feet.

Derek stands, and he feels shorter than usual as he walks carefully towards Peter’s spirit. “Your name is Peter Hale. You’re my uncle. Do you remember anything?”

He sees the flash of a dirty blond goatee, the same one that Derek liked to pull on when he was very small. He holds out his hand to Peter, hoping that will help, somehow, as if he can pass his own memories to his uncle through the contact. Peter’s fingers rise to meet his, though the skin flickers from lightly tanned to blackened and burnt, raw red lines showing through the cracks.

Derek feels all of Peter’s pain when they grasp hands. It eats all of him alive. Teeth bite into him, rip him apart, embers burrowing into his stomach, gobbling up his intestines, and fiery creatures swim up his veins to choke him while hot air fills his lungs. His eyes dry up, shrivel in his head, and his brain pounds, pounds, pounds against the sides of his skull. He can’t think, he can’t breathe, he’s losing himself in the ghost’s pain and rage. It’s his anger now, too. His fury over the life stolen from him, his ambition to be Alpha, all those years with his family—

He remembers a dinner table far too small for the number of people sitting there.

He remembers running beneath a full moon with half a dozen other wolves.

He remembers a woman with a hand on his shoulder and concern on her face.

He remembers a small boy with black hair and green eyes.

They stand across from each other—a too short kid and a man with a goatee and a half burned face. Grey mist swirls around their feet, and the empty plane stretches endlessly all around them. Tears blur Derek’s vision as he approaches in Peter, and in five steps, he’s back at eye level with his uncle.

“Who killed you?”

“Kate Argent.”

A flash of blonde hair, too green eyes, like emeralds, faceted to kill, and a smile so sharp it draws lines of blood from the skin.

Peter clenches a fist, burnt skin creaking. “As she took everything from me, so shall I take everything from her.”

And because they are linked, Derek knows Peter will kill her entire family and leave her among the wreckage. And Peter will use Derek’s body to do it.

But the link goes two ways, and as soon as Peter mentions the name Argent, he sees that Derek is not only friends with an Argent, but that Talia allowed one into the Pack.

Red lightning strikes through the grey sky all around as Peter’s features contort, the burn spreading across his face, eating up his hair, turning his eyes to ugly, black holes. His clothes smolder and flake off, leaving behind charred muscles shot through with red and orange veins like lava.

Derek stumbles back, but he’s a second too slow, and Peter’s hand, blazing hot, smashes into his cheek, flinging him away into the shadows and the deep grey fog.

* * *

Derek, possessed by the ghost, lunges at Stiles and Lydia, claws and teeth sharper than any werewolf’s has a right to be, even the Alpha’s, and fire trails behind each point, the electric blue of his eyes consumed by red and orange flames. Lydia shrieks and steps behind Stiles who yawns, tapping his hand to his mouth before he pulls the warded baseball bat from the void within his pocket and smacks Derek across the face with it.

Derek flies away, shouting, and crashes into the whack-a-mole stand, demolishing it completely.

“Homerun!” Stiles cheers, jumping up and down.

“Holy shit,” Lydia says, peeking out from behind Stiles’ shoulder. “Is he—”

Derek roars and erupts from the shattered stand, flinging bits of wood and metal in every direction.

“Of course not,” Lydia sighs.

“Here.” Stiles drops the baseball bat into her hands, and her knuckles whiten around the grip. Derek snorts, whole body trembling, smoke billowing from his nostrils, and fire trails of his clenched fists, flickering between ghostly grey and threaded with orange and red. “You know, I’m beginning to it was a bad idea to put the ghost in Derek Hale’s body,” Stiles says, tapping his chin and pursing his lips.

“No shit,” Lydia agrees as Derek flings a fistful of fire at their heads. She tackles Stiles to the side since he’s too busy thinking about the consequences of his terrible plan to notice the danger flying right towards them, and they tumble around the corner, just out of reach of the fire which burns unnaturally hot. Lydia lands on top of Stiles, her hair cascading into his face, and he grins his slightly-too-mischievous grin. “If you say anything I will break your teeth,” she warns.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says innocently.

Lydia rolls off him, and they crouch behind the shed, peeking carefully around the corner. Derek stalks towards them and heat waves shimmer of him, igniting the wooden stalls as he walks by. “If you can get me close, I might be able to expel the ghost from Derek’s body.”

Stiles has always loved a plan that involves the word might.

He flashes her two thumbs-up and leaps out from behind the shack. He runs across the ghost’s path, grinning and giving him the finger, before dashing down the nearest alley, fingers rifling through his many pockets. “Witch!” Derek bellows in a voice that’s not his own.

Angering people has always been Stiles’ specialty.

Stiles cuts to the left, inscribing a circle through the stalls to pop out behind Derek. He pulls a tiny wooden bird from his pocket and imbues it with some of his will so that it flaps to life in his hand, and then he flings it at Derek’s head. The bird grows until it’s about the size of a swallow, then it crashes into Derek’s skull with a chirp. Derek snarls and spins around, fiery claws swiping the wooden toy from the air. It spirals away with a sad, weak chirp.

Derek flings a hand in Stiles’ direction and shoots a thick stream of fire at him. Stiles tries not to think about all the other fires he’s seen. He thrusts his own hand out, whispering a word in Irish, and deflects the flames so that they shoot out in all directions, forming a solid wall before him. A wall which Derek jumps through, claws slashing him a path before they reach for Stiles’ face. Stiles throws himself backwards into a backspring, only one hand on the ground while the other digs into his pant pocket, smashing a glass vial at Derek’s feet. A blue-green powder bursts free, and it curls upwards against the wind, right up into Derek’s face. He coughs, sneezes, snorting flames, his forward momentum completely checked.

And then Lydia pops up behind him and smacks him upside the head with the baseball bat. It’s only half a blow since Derek’s easily a head taller than her, but her banshee powers combined with Stiles’ wards are enough to knock the fire right out Derek—literally; it leaves him in a burst like an exploding cloud—and he stumbles just close enough that Stiles can trip him and send him crashing to the ground.

Lydia whacks him again, on the arm. “Out, out, out!” she yells and then hits him in the small of the back.

Stiles is impressed with her technique.

Derek swipes at her, small threads of fire trailing off his claws once more, but she kicks his hand aside and somehow manages to sit down on top of him, her knees pinning his arms to the ground, her perfectly manicured hands cupping his cheeks.

Stiles is definitely not jealous of her.

Lydia closes her eyes and exhales softly. Stiles senses her energy shift as she sinks more fully into her banshee alter-ego. A second set of features appear over Derek’s—an older man, wrinkles around his eyes, a goatee lining his mouth. Burns appear and disappear across his cheekbones.

Stiles scrambles to come up with a plan while Lydia psychically fights with the ghost. He’s not really the planning type, but after the snafu that was his last idea, maybe he should think things through a little bit more this time.

But Lydia finishes her battle before he comes up with more than a quarter of an idea—she literally peels the ghost out of Derek’s body by her fingernails and tosses it into the sky. Stiles sees the brief shape of a man before he blurs back into fire, and a howl rends the air. The ghost carves angry figure-eights in the air. He is so unhappy with them, Stiles can tell. Over their dead bodies has become quite a literal phrase.


	6. Chapter 6

Derek comes to with a headache, a throbbing arm, and an ache in his lower back that he can’t explain. He feels like he’s in the grips of a month-long cold—his head is foggy, his eyes dry, his throat scratchy. He coughs, tasting smoke, and groans, wondering what that weight on his chest is.

He opens his eyes to see Lydia sitting on top of him, her red hair cascading into his face. “Uh…” he says.

“Sorry.” She climbs off him even as something bellows and pouts up above them.

“Run now,” Stiles says, appearing beside the two of them. He grabs Derek’s hand and pulls him upright, dragging him into a run from the get-go, Lydia right behind him. Derek glances up. The sky is a riot of fire and smoke as Peter, dissolved to the product of his rage and death, twists and turns and prepares for the attack.

The three of them race across the park as Peter drops from the sky and slams into the ground right where they’d just been standing, sending shards of wood and concrete anywhere. In an instant, Derek realizes where they’re headed. “Come on, anywhere but there,” he pants, trying to pull Stiles in another direction.

But Stiles just glances over his shoulder and grins.

And then they run into the Haunted Hotel.

The darkness envelops them, and Derek lets the heat bloom through his eyes until the shadows lighten into shades of grey and the tunnel takes shape around him. He reaches back and finds Lydia’s hand to help her along. Already, his spine crawls, just waiting for the first animatronic to jump out at them.

Stiles careens into a side room, a little cubby sometimes used to store extra parts, and Derek and Lydia barely swerve after him. Stiles throws a fistful of powder at the doorway, and a translucent blue barrier blooms in the space. “Okay, that will buy us a few minutes before the ghost tries to kill us.”

“It’s my Uncle Peter,” Derek says, leaning against the wall so he can breathe for a moment.

“Shit,” Lydia breathes. Even she knows the story of how Peter disappeared.

“Allison’s aunt, Kate, burnt him alive.”

“Shit,” she repeats. “What do we do?”

That’s the question, because Derek wants vengeance for his uncle, but he doesn’t want his friends, his Pack getting hurt. “We know his name now,” Stiles says. “That should make it easier to set him free.”

“How the hell do we do that?” Derek asks.

“Let’s go to the ballroom. It’s the largest space.”

“Why does everything hurt?” Derek rubs at the headache pulsing at the back of his skull, places one hand on his spine and the big bruise there.

Lydia hides a metal baseball bat behind her back and whistles innocently.

Stiles doesn’t bother to shield his devious grin. Instead, he breaks the blue barrier with a swipe of his hand and leaps out into the hallway, checking left and right for any sign of Peter. Derek pokes his head out more cautiously, but the ghost and his ferocious fire are nowhere to be found. Derek finds that more than a bit disconcerting.

Stiles lifts a finger to his lips, and they creep down the hallway, though Derek’s not entirely sure that stealth works against a ghost. He guesses they’ll find out. His werewolf senses pick up…something within the ride, but he’s not entirely sure what it is. It mostly the stench of smoke. It suffuses the entire space, and he can’t tell which direction it comes from. It disorients him, throws him off kilter, and he doesn’t like it.

They round a corner, and a gigantic spider slams right into Stiles. None of them see it coming. Certainly not Derek, and that’s the one thing he’s supposed to be able to do. Stiles and the spider crash into the wall, and Stiles yelps, arms flailing against the spider’s snapping mandibles. Lydia smacks it with her baseball bat, though the wards are ineffective against the metal and plastic skin of the animatronic. Derek sinks his claws into its hide, grimacing at the slippery texture, and drags the beast off Stiles, casting it to the ground and stomping on its head as hard as he can. It continues to twitch, so he crushes it again, jumping up and down on its bulbous middle until it coughs out a tiny stream of fire and finally lies still.

Derek stands over it, panting heavily, eyes wild and burning hot. “I. Told. You. So,” he grinds out.

“Told us what, exactly?” Stiles asks.

“That these things are fucking haunted!” he yells and gives it a hefty kick. One of its legs pops off, oozing oil, and he shudders.

“Technically, I guess you’re right this time,” Stiles agrees with a grin. “Your uncle is getting more powerful. It won’t be long before he can break out of the amusement park even without the aid of a physical form.”

“Does an animatronic count as a physical form?” Lydia asks.

Stiles and Derek stare at her. Stiles clearly hadn’t thought of that.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t think of that either,” Stiles says with a short laugh. “Come on.”

He gestures for them to follow, and they start to run. Derek can hear things in the dark. Footsteps, slow and ponderous, echo through the tunnels, behind them, then ahead of them, then up above. The wind whispers. It catches itself in the nooks and crannies of the ride, swooping through the wheels of the carts that they dodge past, and it plucks the cobwebs off the ceiling to caress Derek’s neck. He shivers. Peter is playing with them. He thinks he can hear Peter’s voice, just a whisper at the edge of his hearing so that he can’t make out the words, can’t even tell if it’s all just in his head.

A shape lurches across the next intersection just as the three of them arrive, bulky and lumbering, and only vaguely humanoid. It moves so fast, too fast, like a character frozen on a screen that then jumps forward three seconds. Derek yanks back on Stiles’ arm as his heart leaps right into his throat, but the figure disappears into the blackness of the other side of the tunnel, low laughter echoing back into their faces. Lydia smacks into Derek’s back, clocking the back of his already aching head with her bat.

The three of them peek around the corner one after another, heads stacked one on top of each other like a cartoon. Derek sees no sign of the creature, even with his werewolf eyesight softening the edges of the darkness. “How much further?” he whispers to Stiles.

“It’s just down the hall,” he replies.

“Which one?”

Stiles points down the tunnel the animatronic creature disappeared into.

Derek sighs dejectedly.

Stiles pulls a crystal from his pocket, gives it a kiss, and throws it as far down the corridor as he can. It shatters when it hits the metal track and floods the entire space with a green light that only makes the uneven angles and edges even spookier. One of the black shadows twitches just as the light explodes, and then it sinks right back into the wall.

Derek smells smoke, feels a shimmer of heat across his neck, and he glances over his shoulder to see a fireball blasting towards them. “Run,” he says, patting Stiles on the back repeatedly. Whatever’s down that hallway has to be better than getting burned alive.

He knows.

He felt the entirety of Peter’s death.

They sprint towards the double doors at the far end of the tunnel. The doors are on an electronic release that’s supposed to trigger when the carts reach a certain point on the track which completely ignores their pounding feet, so Derek picks up the pace, pushing past Stiles to ram into the door with his shoulder. It pops open with a crash, paint making the plywood underneath seem heavy and dark, and Derek loses his balance, somersaulting to keep from falling flat on his face.

As he’s rolling, he hears someone shout. He thinks it’s Stiles, but he can’t tell for sure. He skids back to his feet and spins around just in time to see Lydia run into the room, one large, grey hand chasing her back, closing on air just a moment too late. The arm pulls back into the shadows as if it had never been there. Stiles is nowhere to be seen. There’s just the flames. Racing towards them.

Derek and Lydia each grab a door and slam it shut, Derek ripping a rod from the wall to jam through the flimsy door handles. Something shrieks and howls out in the hall, but the expected impact on the doors never comes. The whole ride goes quiet. Derek and Lydia look at each other. Lydia cocks a single eyebrow. Derek presses his eye to a hole in the left door, but all he sees is darkness. No Peter, no animatronics, and certainly no Stiles.

He turns around as Lydia digs her phone out to shine its light around the large faux banquet hall. The cart track winds its way between a series of poorly set dinner tables. Plastic rotten food spills off the plates, cobwebs coating the chairs. One of the tables has fucking tentacles curling out of the centerpiece. There’s something hanging from the chandelier, and Derek knows that there are other creatures waiting to pop out of the walls. There are only a few patrons dotting the large banquet hall, all in various states of torture and distress. One has ghostly lights over its shoulder, another shares its table with a gruesome zombie. The worst is the man who seems to have been cut in half by a cart, each half lying limply on either side of the track.

Derek heads for the center of the room, moving cautiously, watching each spine-chilling animatronic for signs of life. “What happened to Stiles?”

“Something grabbed him. I didn’t see—” Lydia shakes her head.

“Well, get ready to fight,” Derek says because there are fingers of fire pushing their way through the various cracks in the walls, weaving towards all the various monsters scattered across the room. Every set of eyes bloom orange, and then the animatronics creak, groan, and stand, turning slowly to face Derek and Lydia, arms lifting, jaws dropping, and moans emanating from every mouth.

He’s starting to wish he’d told Talia about this whole thing.

* * *

Stiles gets thrown through a wall. A hand grabs the back of his blazer and flings him backwards. He crashes right through the flimsy wood, hits the ground, and flips end over end, and finally skids to a halt, lying flat on his back, dazed and breathless. If he had a quarter for every time he was thrown through a wall…

A shadow falls over him, and he sits up slowly. His blazer is ripped at the seam, and he frowns as he tugs at it. This is his favorite blazer. He found it in a New York thrift store ten years ago. It had a butterscotch in the pocket, so he wove a little spell to constantly replenish his supply. He pulls out the little yellow candy and holds it out to the werewolf that looms over him. “Butterscotch?”

The animatronic is missing patches of fur all over its face, and there’s a deep gouge in its snout, its clothes torn asunder as if it’s only just transformed and ripped right out of them. The red eyes bloom with twin fire bursts, the claws scratching the cement floor as it steps towards him, an arm lifting jerkily to point at him.

“Bit on the nose?” Stiles continues, nodding towards the choice of body.

Peter snarls. “I had no quarrel with you, witch.”

“Look.” Stiles clambers to his feet a little awkwardly since he thinks he sprained something in his back and picks at the torn shoulder of his blazer. “If you just wanted to go after Kate Argent, I would let you, of course I would. I mean, you’ve been in my head. You know I almost went out in the same way. I know how fucking terrifying it is. But it sounds like you just want to go on a big ol’ rampage, and that’s just a smidgen far.”

“Then I’ll kill you, take your power, and use it to leave this god-forsaken park.” Peter prowls forward, flames dripping from his claws, melting the cheap plastic off the metal frame underneath.

“And your nephew?”

There’s a hitch in Peter’s step.

“Because you know he won’t let you hurt his friends.”

The werewolf shrugs one lumpy shoulder. Uncle Peter is not there anymore. Ghost Peter is. And he’s _angry_ , as evidenced by the way he tries to claw Stiles’ face off.

Stiles leaps back, feeling the breath of wind on his face as the claws sweep by. He throws a fistful of wolfsbane in Peter’s eyes before he remembers an animatronic doesn’t breathe, and would a ghost werewolf even be susceptible to the stuff? Stiles has never had the opportunity to find out. Peter stutter steps just a little bit, as if reacting to the memory of the stuff rather than the substance itself.

So the thing about banishing ghosts, Stiles thinks as he turns tail and runs towards the other side of the room, is that it’s different each time. It’s not like in the movies—there’s no mumbo-jumbo you can pull out a book and apply to each new case, no, you have to _connect_ to the ghost personally, guide it out of the world, and Stiles, for all his years, has never been terribly good at connecting with the living, let alone the dead.

Stiles throws a ball of yellow liquid at the wall which shatters and splatters across the brick, and he jumps through it, crossing his arms to shield his face. He passes through the wall into the space between shadows. He needs to get back to Derek Hale and Lydia, but heaven forbid he travel like a normal person.

The portal swirls shut behind him, and he kicks off into the darkness, lifting his twitch crystal torch from his pocket. The real world is a slim impression around him, mostly wreathed in flame from Peter’s overwhelming presence. He may be the most powerful ghost Stiles has ever encountered. Derek Hale and Lydia are two blobs, one glowing blue and the other white, trapped within a circle of Peter’s power.

Stiles swims towards them. He’s gotten lost in this space before, allowed himself to drift through the comforting darkness, but for once, he has people relying on him, and he cannot let them down. It’s sort of a nice feeling. Terrifying, but nice.

His hands still have drops off yellow on them, so he’s able to pry one of the seams of the world and tumbles through the crack. His ears pop, colors rush past his eyes, and then he tumbles out the other side, right into the open air. He sticks out a hand and releases a pulse of energy that slows his fall, so that he flops to the ground rather than crashing to it.

“Good of you to drop by,” Derek Hale says.

“It’s a skill.” Stiles clambers upright. He’s landed in a sea of chaos, animatronics on all sides, smoke billowing about the floor before joining the ring of fire all around the ballroom which seems to be slowly drawing nearer to them. “We seemed to be effed in the a.”

“Eloquent,” Lydia says flatly as she takes a swing at a tentacle whipping towards her from a nearby table.

“I have a proper plan this time,” Stiles announces. “Lydia, I’m going to hijack you powers, yeah?”

“Do I get to say no?”

“Nope.”

“Whatever you’re going to do, hurry up because I don’t fucking like this.” Derek leaps out of the way of a lumbering animatronic with an adorable little yelp. He wrenches a chair out of the floor and throws it at the vampire bride. The two collide, collapsing to the ground in a shower of sparks.

Stiles digs his awareness into the fabric of the ride, trying to make sure that Peter’s entire essence is within the ballroom. “Lydia, come here,” he says to Lydia, turning towards her and holding out both hands.. “Derek, be ready. I’ll need you for this, too.”

“I really wish you’d tell us your plans before—” Derek Hale begins, but Stiles is already weaving his and Lydia’s power together. Lydia’s veins glow white to his Third Eye, and he teases them out her fingertips and into his. A glowing sphere forms between their clenched hands as Stiles’ energy pours down his wrists to collide with hers. When the ball is the size of his head, Stiles throws their arms out, releasing the energy which expands into a crackling dome all around the room, encompassing everyone and everything inside.

Stiles manipulates the reality within the dome, using Lydia to connect with Peter’s past and bring his memories forward over the ballroom. They stand just outside the Haunted Hotel on a crisp autumn day, the sky overcast above them. Stiles and Lydia are translucent, standing inside the ride’s control booth, though they’re alone, for the moment.

They barely have time to glance at each other before Peter comes stumbling out from between two of the arcade booths. The entire scene is washed in grey, but Stiles can tell that Peter is bleeding, his shirt wet and dark, one hand clamped to the wound. He glances behind him, frantic, and almost trips on an uneven cobblestone. He runs for the entrance to the Haunted Hotel, but before he gets five steps, an arrow whips out of the shadows, right past his shoulder, and embeds itself in the painted cart.

Stiles can see how this played out. Peter turned around just as Kate Argent strode out of the shadows, firing another wolfsbane-laced arrow that hit Peter in the chest, puncturing a lung. Cue a series of taunts, a smidge of torture, a bit of rope play, and finally, the fire.

Part of Peter’s mind pushes against the bonds Stiles has placed around the ballroom, but Stiles expands his focus, draws the details in tighter, one of Lydia’s hands squeezed in his.

In Stiles’ version of events, it’s Derek Hale who walks out of those shadows, hands spread wide, nonthreatening. Peter stares at him, uncomprehending. Derek looks just a little confused, too, since Stiles gave him absolutely no warning. It’s not his fault. Sometimes he forgets that other people can’t read minds.

“Uncle Peter, do you remember when I was six, and I couldn’t sleep from the night terrors?” His eyes skirt past Peter to Stiles and Lydia for the briefest of moments. “All werewolves have them, when they’re young, but mine were worse than most. I couldn’t sleep at all. Not even my mother could comfort me.”

Stiles is proud of Derek Hale for being able to talk for so long.

“But you told me that a peaceful rest will come to all of us, if we’re open to it. You deserve a peaceful rest, Uncle Peter. It’s long past time.”

Derek Hale and Peter stare at each other for a long moment. Peter trembles in place, and after a beat, Derek approaches him like one would a frightened animal. He pauses an arm’s length away and holds out a hand, swallowing heavily. Stiles feels itchy with impatience. He’s never been much good at taking a back seat or letting a moment stretch. Lydia digs her sharp nails into his hand and gives him a look. The message is clear. Chill the fuck out and let Derek handle this.

Stiles cannot physically chill the fuck out, but he can let Derek Hale handle it.

Derek’s hand is still outstretched. Peter stares at it, enraptured, and the fabric of their reality trembles, the truth of Peter’s memory fighting against the scenario Stiles has created. Derek Hale pleads with Peter with his eyes, begging for his uncle to come back to him, and Peter can’t seem to look away from that gaze. His hand lifts, almost under its own volition, and then his fingers wrap around Derek’s. A white light blossoms around them, flushing away the clouds and the chill and the trace of smoke that’s been lingering over everything, carried over from the reality they left behind. There’s only a hint of a burn left on Peter’s now glowing face, his spirit overlaid by the outline of a wolf standing on its hindlegs. Derek squints into the light, but he doesn’t release Peter’s hand. “It’s time to sleep, Uncle Peter,” he says.

Peter smiles, just the ghost of an expression, and he nods to Derek, even turns to wink at Stiles before he lets his form dissolve into light and float away, disappearing into the overcast sky.

* * *

The world is blurry when Stiles drops the spell and deposits the three of them back in the real world, but Derek dashes his hand across his eyes and wipes away the tears before the others notice. His heart still thrums within his chest. He can’t get it to calm down, even with all the centering techniques Talia taught the Betas.

A hand claps his shoulder, startling him, and he sees Stiles looking back at him, a soft expression on his face. Lydia is on his other side, sliding a hand into his to give it a squeeze. “Did we do it?” he asks.

Stiles gestures around the ballroom. Everything is in disarray—there’s the vampire he smashed with a chair, the tentacle Lydia played baseball with—but the fire is gone, just a bit of soot along the edges to mark that it was there.

“Can we go outside?” Derek asks, rubbing at his arms, half convinced that one of the animatronics is still going to jump up at him.

Stiles nods, and the three of them retrace their steps through the ride, stepping through the archway and back out into the still dark night. Even from here, Derek can see the destruction they wrought on the amusement park. The wooden game booths are shattered, strewn across the walkway, and fires still smolder in the wreckage, sending spires of smoke into the sky.

They pick their way through the ruins to the front gate. Derek’s car sits just beyond the fence in the perfectly average parking lot, as if the chaos within the park had been nothing more than an over the top daydream.

“What the hell are we going to do about all that?” Lydia wonders, gesturing back the way they came.

But Stiles flaps a hand. “Leave that to me. I’m a deus ex machina, after all.” He winks at her.

“Lydia, will you wait for me in the car?” Derek asks, digging his keys from his pocket and holding them out to her.

Lydia, unlike some of the other Betas, knows how to take a hint. She winks at him, takes the keys, and slips out through the still open gate.

Derek turns to Stiles, running his fingers along the inside of his jacket sleeve. “Did we really do it?” he asks.

Stiles nods. “You helped him find peace.”

“That’s good, that’s good.” Derek bites his lip. “All these years, we never knew. Mom always sort of suspected he was dead, but I never wanted to believe it. How am I going to tell her…and Allison, about her aunt?”

“Not really my strong suit, sorry. I’m more of a bury your secrets kind of witch.” Stiles laughs, but it’s a bitter sound, the smile a little cracked.

“Thank you, Stiles. For everything.”

His grin glues itself back together, suddenly radiant in the orange streetlight. “That’s what I’m good at. Everything.”

Derek rolls his eyes and punches Stiles in the arm who zaps him with a little electricity in retaliation. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” Stiles asks.

“Bright and early,” Derek sighs. Why couldn’t they do this the night before his day off?

Stiles winks, and between one breath and the next, he’s gone, probably crinkling himself into some fold in the fabric of reality or whatever it is he does. Derek rolls his eyes and squeezes himself through the gate, locking the amusement park up behind him.

“Good night, Peter.”


End file.
